Earth Day Mirth Day

In honor of Earth Day, 2013, here is "Baobab" from Poetrees, art and poem copyright 2011 by Douglas Florian

 

 

 

 Baobab

 

Jug tree.

Hug tree.

Upside

Down tree.

Vat tree.

Fat tree.

Bottle tree.

Brown tree.

Double tree.

Bubble tree.

Candlestick.

Girth tree.

Earth tree.

Thick!

Thick!

Thick!

 

[in Just-] Just in time

[in Just-]

By E. E. Cummings 1894–1962

in Just-

spring when the world is mud-

luscious the little

lame balloonman

 

whistles far and wee

and eddieandbill come

running from marbles and

piracies and it's

spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer

old balloonman whistles

far and wee

and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's

spring

and

the

goat-footed

balloonMan whistles

far

and

wee

Spellbound
by Emily Brontë
The night is darkening round me, The wild winds coldly blow; But a tyrant spell has bound me And I cannot, cannot go. The giant trees are bending Their bare boughs weighed with snow. And the storm is fast descending, And yet I cannot go. Clouds beyond clouds above me, Wastes beyond wastes below; But nothing drear can move me; I will not, cannot go.

New York Public Library 100 Best Titles of the Year

The New York Public Library has selected Shiver Me Timbers for its 100 Best Titles of the Year Look under Poetry. Click on the arrrrrrt above to see it BIG.
http://www.nypl.org/100childrensbooks2012#poetry  Art Copyright 2012 by Robert Neubecker

Comment by Dorothy Parker

Today on Black Friday /Poetry Friday I'm posting a Dorothy Parker poem. Parker, known for her dark sardonic wit, and lemon meringue pie, famously said, "The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity."

Comment  by Dorothy Parker

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong.
And I am Marie of Roumania

‘Early to bed’

BY MARY MAPES DODGE

Early to bed and early to rise:

If that would make me wealthy and wise

I’d rise at daybreak, cold or hot,

And go back to bed at once. Why not?

I had to awaken early today to fix the car.

Meanwhile the gracious Jama over at Jama's Alphabet Soup has me Shiver Me Timbers hoisted up the flagpole.

And Poetry Friday is hosted over at Laura Salas.

Source: She Wields a Pen: American Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century (University of Iowa Press, 1997)

Happy Birthday Shel Silverstein (with Johnny Cash)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7e5ZVIpB4sw&feature=player_embedded#!

Shel Silverstein (link above) sings and upstages Johnny Cash on The Johnny Cash Show, with two  songs about fathers

 

Happy Birthday, Sheldon!

Review from Eric Carle Museum

A lovely review of UnBEElievables was posted today  on the blog of the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. I really think the reviewer "got" the idea of the book: Learn while you laugh, and look while you learn.

Top of the Shelf: UnBEElievables

Tuesday, September 4th, 2012

UnBEElievables: honeybee poems and paintings

by Douglas Florian (Beach Lane Books)
This volume contains poems that often burst with humor, puns, alliteration, and rhyme. Each poem is accompanied by a nugget of scientific fact and faces a page of bees with attitude, sometimes wearing fancy hats or jewelry. Many poems feature different bees, including queens, workers, scouts, and drones. Other poems focus on life cycles, pollination, the recent disappearance of bees, and beekeepers. We learn a lot, and with pleasure in the inventive language and simple, funny paintings with lots of green and gold, which are sometimes amid collage and rubber stamp work. Further reading is suggested at the end, along with a BEEbliography.
Here's the link:
http://www.carlemuseum.org/blog/?tag=douglas-florian

I Am A Robot

For Poetry Friday, hosted today by the illustrious industrious Sylvia Vardell over at Poetry For Children, I'm continuing my robot theme from last Friday. I've got a robotic dactylic idyllic poem. The image is from a Russian children's book, Your Name? Robot. Courtesy 50 watts.com. 

I Am A Robot

I am a 
Robot, a 
Robot I am.
I'm fully connected,
And my name is Sam.
I've got robot children
And one robot wife.
To dream robot schemes
Is the theme of my life.
I tried to join Facebook
It's such a cool space.
But they kicked me off
For I don't 
Have a 
Face.

Ahoy, Matey!

Ahoy, Matey! Today is the publication day for Shiver me Timbers, me new pirate book with illustrations by Robert "Scallywag" Neubecker, me old shipmate at The New York Times twenty five years ago. It's already stolen two starrred reviews. Let me know if you want an author-graphed bookplate from me, I've already sent some out.

Here's me poem about Blackbeard, all based on facts. Except, perhaps, the end. Poem copyright 2012 by Douglas Florian. Illustration copyright 2012 by Robert Neubecker.

Blackbeard

Blackbeard braided his long black beard,
Then tied the braids with bows.
He stuffed burning rope beneath his hat.
Put a ring right through his nose.

Blackbeard boarded many a ship
To pillage and plunder and steal.
He robbed with pleasure
Great troves of treasure,
Which he did his best to conceal.

Blackbeard feared no other man--
A pirate as cruel as they come.
One look from his eyes
Could terrorize,
But he always wrote home to his mum.

National Geographic Book of Animal Poetry

I'm proud to be apart of J. Patrick Lewis's new book: National Geographic Book of Animal Poetry: 200 Poems with Photographs That Squeak, Soar, and Roar!, due out in mid-September. To say "I'm in good company" is an understatement, as Benjamin Franklin, Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, Rudyard Kipling, and Robert Louis Stevenson are just some of the poets in this visually stunning book illustrated with photographs from the National Geographic archives. Contemporary poets include Jack Prelutsky, Joyce Sidman, Leadbelly, and J. Patrick Lewis.
Kirkus Reviews has already given it a starred review!

I, ROBOT

I don't know about you guys, but I hate to have to prove that I'm "not a robot" every time I make a comment on a blog, deciphering those Captchas of discombobulated words. So for Poetry Friday, over at Dori Reads, I've created a poem that addresses that directly. 

I, ROBOT

To speak your mind
You have to prove
You're "not a robot"
And be approved.

Before your comment
Words are said,
You have to read
What can't be read.

But here I'll tell
The Blogosphere:
I AM A ROBOT!
I'm coming out here.

As for YOU, Please prove you're not a human:

By the way, growing up, Isaac Asimov was one of my favorite authors, not just his science fiction, but his non-fiction as well. I even wore a string tie in junior high school.

Shiver me timbers not farrrr away!

 

Ahoy, Mateys! Me spies tell me that Shiver Me Timbers! will be released to all landlubbers on Tuesday, August 28th. I'll gladly send author-graphed bookplates to any buyers of the book. Here's a sneak preview of one of me pirate poems.

And remember, I wrote the poems but illustrious illustrator Robert Neubecker did the ARRRRRT!

 

ARRR!

 

We call our ship a man-o'-warrr!

We sail to ports both near and farrr!

From Timbuktu to Madagascarrr!

At night we navigate by starrr!

We're hard as nails with many a scarrr!

We're pirates, scary pirates we arrr!

Goodbye, Jose.

I was sad to hear that my Greenwillow friend Jose Aruego passed away the other day. His youthful high energy at school visits belied his age. With Ariane Dewey he illustrated more than 60 fresh, funny, and original books including the bestseller Antarctic Antics, a book of penguin poems written by the multi-talented Judy Sierra.
Here's an excerpt from the poem 

My Father's Feet

To keep myself up off the ice,
I find my father's feet are nice.
I snuggle in his belly fluff,
And that's how I stay warm enough.

Poem copyright 1998 by Judy Sierra. Art copyright 1998 by Jose Aruego and Ariane Dewey

The Hedgehog

Poetry Friday is at A Wrong Spong, I mean A Wrung Sponge!

The Hedgehog

By J. J. Bell

The Hedgehog sleeps beneath the hedge—

As you may sometimes see—

And I prefer it sleeping there

To sleeping here with me!

Omaha Grandpa

A limmerick for Poetry Friday, that I based upon this lovely "outsider" art by Maria Forde, whose grandpa was hit by a train in Iowa and got patched up in Omaha.

click to enlarge art

Omaha Grandpa

My grandpa got hit by a train

It took away half of his brain

    But they fixed up his head

    With a new one instead,

So really he shouldn't complain.

poem copyright 2012 by Douglas Florian

                                         Walsall stone hippo by John Wood

Habits of the Hippopotamus
by Arthur Guiterman (1871-1943)

The hippopotamus is strong
     And huge of head and broad of bustle;
The limbs on which he rolls along
     Are big with hippopotomuscle.

He does not greatly care for sweets
     Like ice cream, apple pie, or custard,
But takes to flavor what he eats
     A little hippopotomustard.

The hippopotamus is true
     To his principles, and just;
He always tries his best to do
     The things one hippopotomust.

He never rides in trucks or trams,
      In taxicabs or omnibuses,
And so keeps out of traffic jams
     And other hippopotomusses.

Poetry Friday is over at Violet Nesdoly/Poems



New Stanzas for Amazing Grace
By Lord Allen Ginsberg 1926–1997-

I dreamed I dwelled in a homeless place
Where I was lost alone
Folk looked right through me into space
And passed with eyes of stone

O homeless hand on many a street
Accept this change from me
A friendly smile or word is sweet
As fearless charity

Woe workingman who hears the cry
And cannot spare a dime
Nor look into a homeless eye
Afraid to give the time

So rich or poor no gold to talk
A smile on your face
The homeless ones where you may walk
Receive amazing grace

I dreamed I dwelled in a homeless place
Where I was lost alone
Folk looked right through me into space
And passed with eyes of stone
April 2, 1994
Composed at the request of Ed Sanders for his production of The New Amazing
Grace, performed November 20, 1994, at the Poetry Project in St. Mark’s Church
in-the-Bouwerie. Thanks to the Poetry Foundation.

The Poetry Friday Roundup is at On The Way to Somewhere with Rena Traxel



Pirates Poetry Preview

For yer Poetry Friday Roundup, a sneak peek at me fall pirate book Shiver Me Timbers (Beach Lane), with pirate paintings by Robert (Scallywag) Neubecker, has already pillaged  starrrred reviews from Kirkus and School Library Journal (see below). Here be a preview fer all you landlubbers called The Pirates Code of Conduct. Me spies tell me that Poetry Friday is hosted at Life is Better with Books.

The Pirates' Code of Conduct

Don't take a bath.
Avoid all math.
It's best to yell
And blessed to smell.
Act rash and rude.
Dash down yer food.
Be sure to slurp
And belch and burp.
Take lots of naps.
Hide all yer maps.
Dismay, Disrupt,
And interrupt.
Rob, steal, and loot,
But don't get cute.
Tell lots of lies.
Make alibis.
Don't change yer clothes.
Yell, "That she blows!"
Pirate poem from Shiver me Timbers copyright 2012 by Douglas Florian
Pirate illustration from Shiver Me Timbers copyright 2012 by Robert Neubecker

School Library Journal (next month)
  FLORIAN, Douglas. Shiver Me Timbers!: Pirate Poems & Paintings. illus. by Robert Neubecker. 32p. CIP. S & S/Beach Lane Bks. Aug. 2012. Tr $16.99. ISBN 978-1-4424-1321-4; ebook $12.99. ISBN 978-1-4424-5712-6. LC 2010048963.

Gr 2-5–From the smiling, rollicking kids on the cover laying claim to a beach full of treasure to the shipload of fierce, sneering, plundering, cutlass-waving, face-making buccaneers, boastful of their scurrilous behavior, these pirates are a motley group. In 19 poems, they teach “Pirate Patter” and punishment and describe some less-than-appetizing meals at sea; their penchant for stealing, burying, and sometimes losing track of treasure; and their weapons. To hear them tell it, they’re “...rude, crude dudes with attitudes” who practice growling–“Arrr!”–and “…love to try to make you cry.” “A pirate’s life is not for me!” says the young bloke rowing away from the ship under a starry sky. The up- and downsides of life on a pirate ship are evident in Neubecker’s bold, colorful, detail-filled cartoonlike illustrations, outlined in India ink. Kids, boys especially, will be charmed by these feisty poems.–Susan Scheps, formerly at Shaker Heights Public Library, OH

The Drone Bees on Huff Post Books today!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/books/

The Drone Bees poem from UnBEElievables is on Huff Post Books today. Check out those bad boyz at the link above. Scroll down right margin of screen.

Dove

For Poetry Friday, hosted today at Check It Out, a 12 word poem I wrote for Sylvia Vardell's Poetry Tag Time, entitled Dove. I had to follow (tag) Betsy Franco's poem Crow, and it was snowing outside at the time (Sounds good).


Dove 


A dove is just a crow
Covered by a foot of snow.