Flicker Flash/African Acrostics/Silver Seeds
I think that all three of these books can be used in my first grade class. Flicker Flash was an amazing example of concrete poems. While reading the poems, I was thinking of ways to integrate this book when we talk about many different science concepts like light, seasons, and even plants. My favorite poem was probably Birthday Candles. The language and description actually helped me to visualize faces lit up by birthday cakes. I think that young readers would especially enjoy this. Silver Seeds was full of beautiful poems that would be good examples of acrostic poetry for young readers. So many young writers like to do acrostics, but like to start a new sentence with each line or just put a word on each line. This is a good example of how the text can be continued throughout the poem. It was hard to find a favorite poem from this book, but I found that I the shorter they were the more I liked them. I think because it gave such a complete thought in just one or two lines that really made me think about the poem. When I read African Acrostics I thought about what a great book it would be to teach adjectives as well as poetry. The language was very descriptive and I felt that the poems matched the beautiful photographs in the book. I also liked how the title of the poem was different from the beginning letters of the acrostic. My favorite was Leopard Plan because the letters that made up the words in each line weren’t the first letters of each line. I think this shows kids that it is okay to think out of the box when writing poetry.
