Books I Love: Where the Sidewalk Ends

Title
Where the Sidewalk Ends

Author
Shel Silverstein

I first read this book
about 1985

I have a powerful memory of my mother coming into my grandmother's back bedroom where I was playing one afternoon. She held a thick book in her hands.  The book's jacket was gone, leaving the brown cover with a darker brown scrawl pressed in it. I realized later this was the imprint of Shel Silverstein's signature. I've always thought it was impressive that his signature was pressed into the cover of a book.

Mom told me she wanted to share a book with me--a book of poetry. She stretched out beside me on the king-size bed and began reading some of the poems. I vividly remember her interpretation of "Sick."

I was hooked instantly.

Not only did I fall in love with Shel Silverstein's poetry, but I discovered a love of poetry in general.

The poetry I write is terrible. I simply do not think like a poet. I wish I did. Imagine being able to distill a complex emotion or thought into the confines of a poem.

Shel Silverstein and his poetry have fared me well. I've bonded with friends over our mutual love for his poems. I've performed his poems in poetry competitions.

One of my favorite memories of performing his work was when I read "Little Abigail and the Beautiful Pony" to a school group touring the library. (Technically, that poem is from A Light In the Attic, but I love that book, too.)

I was reading to this group of first or second graders, and I was having a blast.  I was reading with emotion and attitude and truly giving them a show when, from the front row, I hear one girl say to her friend, "She's crazy."

I don't know how I managed to stop myself from bursting out laughing when I heard that. Internally, I certainly was. I can only hope she delighted in my "crazy" performance and maybe even remembers it still.

But she was correct. I am crazy about poetry, and I love, love, love to share those feelings with others. Just as my mother did with me.

Cynthia Rylant: An Appreciation

I was first introduced to Cynthia Rylant by a dear friend of mine. She was an elementary teacher and lent me a number of her personal children's books to read, basically re-introducing me to a world of literature that I had missed during my teen and college years.

She placed Missing May in my hands and told me to read it. It was a paperback with that familiar gold Newbery medal on the cover, and it was thin. I probably read it during one lunch break at my summer job.

What a stunning little book! In so few pages, Rylant describes a girl who has lost many people in her life but doesn't let that stop her from forming a new family and learning to live with those losses. It is the perfect book for a child to read who has lost a loved one. It reassures children that it is okay to miss someone but also encourages them not to wallow in that grief. It's one of the most realistic depictions of a child recovering from a loved one's death that I've ever read.

I've since read many other books by Rylant, and each one is a gem. I'm especially fond of her poetry book God Went to Beauty School. It's full of poems about God celebrating what we would consider mundane pleasures in life and finding the absolute beauty, the true awesomeness of life. Take this segment from the title poem:

He got into nails, of course,
because He'd always loved
hands—
hands were some of the best things
He'd ever done
and this way He could just
hold one in His
and admire those delicate
bones just above the knuckles,
delicate as birds' wings,
and after He'd done that
awhile,
He could paint all the nails
any color He wanted,
then say,
"Beautiful,"
and mean it.

Isn't that wonderful? I adore Cynthia Rylant's work. Take some time and enjoy her work for yourself.

Books I Love: Habibi

Title
Habibi
Author
Naomi Shihab Nye
I first read this book
during my senior year of college in 1998

I first learned about Naomi Shihab Nye from a poetry reading she gave at Texas Lutheran University, the college I attended. During her presentation, she read a poem about Shiner, a small town in central Texas that was ten miles from my own hometown.

At that point in time, lots of people in Texas had never heard of Shiner (although that has changed now due to increased marketing of Shiner Beer), so it was quite a shock to hear a poet mention it. After the reading, Nye was signing books, and I went up to her and asked if she had ever been to my hometown. She said, "No, but I want to live there for a year."

This baffled me. Like people from small towns often do, I thought my hometown was the dead end of the world. Who in their right mind would want to live there?

But I was also baffled for another reason. Why would anyone want to live somewhere for only a year? Why go to all that trouble to move if it's only temporary?

I remained fascinated by Nye, however. Something about her poetry combined with her amazingly open way of seeing the world intrigued me.

While I was attending my first Texas Library Association conference (technically the exhibits only) in San Antonio, I spotted a children's book with a gorgeous cover. Seeing Nye's name on it meant I had to read it. As it was a finished book and not an advanced reader copy, I paid for it and took it back to my college apartment to read. What a wise decision that was!

Habibi is inspired by Nye's own childhood when her family moved to Jerusalem to be closer to her paternal grandmother. It is a beautiful story of an American girl learning about her cultural heritage, her family, and herself while far away from the life she is used to living.

Each chapter begins with these poetic sentences that are simply perfect. I wish I could write like that. I wish I could think like that. I'll never be a poet, but I do love to read it. Habibi is prose, but it reads like poetry. It's nothing less than beautiful and has stayed with me all these years.

Books like Habibi make me think there could be a more peaceful, tolerant future for the world. People like Naomi Shihab Nye make me think that, too.

Just for Fun

I was reading Janet Reid's blog today, and she posted the results from a couple quizzes she took online. I thought they looked like fun (I love online quizzes), so I took them, too. Here are the results.

58%
I also found this site today. So, it was a zombie day for me. My favorite poem is the one "by" Edgar Allan Poe.

Another quiz result.

I could survive for 44 seconds chained to a bunk bed with a velociraptor

Created by Bunk Beds.net

This last quiz is just completely wrong on so many levels. But I like the idea of having something that says I'm a genius, even if it is just a goofy Internet quiz.

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