Thursday, November 14, 2019

The Best of Today's Little Ditty 2017-2018 + The Poetry Friday Roundup



It's here! It's here!

The Best of Today's Little Ditty 2017-2018 has arrived,
its pile of poetry paraphernalia in tow.

Our third "Best of TLD" collection is available in paperback for $9.95 or as a Kindle ebook for $5.95. Click HERE to purchase at Amazon.com. (As of the writing of this blog post, the two avenues for purchasing are not yet linked to the same page on Amazon, but don't let that stop you from grabbing the version of your choice!)

As usual, it was a team effort to make this book happen, starting with an uber-diligent ditty committee who reviewed more than 500 poems (527 to be exact) from 2017 and 2018.

This, and all sketches in this post, © 2019 by Miranda Barnes.

A wagon load of thanks goes to:
Matt Forrest Esenwine
Stephanie Farrow
Rebekah Hoeft
Kimberly Hutmacher
Michelle Kogan
Jone Rush MacCulloch
Linda Mitchell
Diane Mayr
Buffy Silverman
Margaret Simon
Liz Steinglass
and Tabatha Yeatts.
Each committee member was assigned several challenges to review independently and then I consolidated the results. As always, a few excellent poems were left out for one reason or another, but I think you'll agree that the final result is impressive nonetheless. I think this is our best collection yet. It's also the largest—96 poems by 57 poets! As our little writing community has grown in size over the last five years, it has clearly also grown in experience.

Thanks also to the twelve authors and editors whose DMC challenges were instrumental—




and to ALL the TLD readers who responded to them. You make the decisions about which poems to include VERY difficult indeed!

Once again, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Renée LaTulippe for her invaluable help throughout the process, including advice, suggestions, design expertise, editing, proofreading, and reality checks when needed. Thank you, Renée!

And to my daughter Miranda, thank you for giving this book its character with such an adorable cover and charming interior illustrations! (Read my interview with Miranda HERE.)

I'd like to give a shout-out to Helen Frost and Paul W. Hankins who were kind enough to provide such wonderful, blush-inducing blurbs for the back cover,




and last but not least, my heartfelt thanks to the poets whose work is featured in this volume:


As I say in my introduction to this book, for me you're more than fellow writers. You're friends. And YOU are what makes all the time I put into blogging worthwhile.

It's an honor to write poetry with you... and READ poetry together as well. So let's keep the party going with this week's Poetry Friday Roundup. Add your links below.


Click here to find out more about Poetry Friday.





We had another active week on our "Words at Play" padlet with new contributions by Janice Scully, Cindy Breedlove, Mindy Gars Dolandis, Karen Eastlund, David McMullin, Cory Corrado, and Tabatha Yeatts. Carol Varsalona has posted hers today at Beyond LiteracyLink. Read about this month's challenge and join in the fun HERE.



35 comments:

  1. Wow!! 96 poems by 57 poets? Amazing. Congratulations! Such a joy to see so many PF peeps on the list, along with some new names I'm anxious to learn more about. Kudos to you, Michelle, as well as all the other folks who worked on this project. :)

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  2. Michelle, I am so excited to see this in print. Congratulations to you and your very talented daughter in creating another beautiful poetry anthology. And congrats to all the other contributors.

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  3. Congratulations, Michelle, on another amazing tribute to poetry with a so many poets from so many poetry friends. I hope you share a few sneak peaks in the weeks to come. Thank you for hosting. I just came home from a state ed conference so I will start working on my post after unpacking. PS: Love the cover of the book your daughter created!

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  4. Woot! This is so exciting! I can't wait to check out all the poetic goodness in these pages. Congratulations to you and thanks for hosting this week.

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  5. I am so appreciative of all that you've accomplished in this, Michelle, the creativity of you and your guests inspires every time, then those who write for the challenge brings more inspiration. I feel honored to be included every time. Thanks to the committee and their work, too, and to Miranda for the sketching and that ultra-fabulous cover. Wow for that, too. Finally, I can't wait to see the book itself, to read all 96 poems by those I know and those I'm about to meet. Thank you!

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  6. Looks Marvelous Michelle, Congratulations! Three that's a nice round number…Lovely animated art– and thanks all around to all involved in seeing this next edition come to Life, xo ;)

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  7. Exciting! Congratulations, Michelle! Thanks for making the challenges happen & for making this collection available! You do a wonderful service.

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  8. Awesome! I'm getting my copy. Congrats! Michelle, anyone in the anthology with an Amazon author page should be able to add themselves as an author to the book's page. It may help drive more traffic to the book page. Cheers!

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  9. Congratulations, Michelle! What an enormous amount of work, but the end result looks amazing. :)

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  10. What a party over here! CONGRATS, Michelle, and CONGRATS, Miranda! I hope you sell tons of copies, but we all recognize a labor of love when we see one (and even those invisible committee member/advisor laborers, too) - and we are grateful, all around. Woo-hoooo!

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  11. Congratulations again, Michelle (and Miranda!) - and thank you so much for all you do to promote children's poetry! Always an honor to be part of this.

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  12. So many congratulations to you and to your committee! Cheers! I love Miranda's artwork you share here - it is so sweet and so warm. Such a cool family collaboration. Thank you for hosting today and for all you give here. xx

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  13. So fabuloso!! More this weekend but for now, before my 7:15 phone conference with a parent, I've posted a link to my Facebook page because Blogger is not working for me today. Please let me know if it works!

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  14. Congratulations, Michelle! You have created not just a book, but a community. That's really something to be proud of!

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  15. Michelle, so many congratulations for yet another Best of TLD! What a proud bookmama you must be... and what a gift you are to all of us and to the world. Thank you! xo

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  16. Michelle: Huge congratulations to you for all the love and work you put into this project. I am so pleased to be included and have highlighted your TLD anthology on my blog today. My best to you!

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  17. Congratulations to you and your talented daughter, Michelle! TLD has been such an inspiration to me, and it's a dream to be included in your anthology with so many clever and creative folks. Thank you!

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  18. Congratulations Michelle and the whole team, and to the poets who make up the volume. TLD has grown and flowered in so many wonderful ways.

    Michelle -- I think I'm coming to your area in January. Let's talk!

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  19. congratulation on this newest collection, and it is definitely an honor and to write with you too!

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  20. Congratulations, Michelle! It was an honor to contribute a challenge that led to such wonderful poems.

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  21. Huge congratulations, Michelle! So much time and effort must have gone into such a project. I cannot wait to read my copy!

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  22. Congratulations, Michelle! This is a wonderful project, bringing the poetry community together in such a great way. Thank you.

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  23. Congrats on the new anthology! The cover is lovely. I look forward to receiving my copy and searching its pages for familiar friends.

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  24. Congratulations--and what fun! I can't wait to read this new book. Thanks to everyone who worked on it for all the time and effort!
    Oh, and thanks for hosting, too!!

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  25. I can't wait to get my copy. I love this opportunity to work with such a wonderful community of writers. Thanks for your time and dedication.

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  26. Congratulations! What an amazing compilation of talent. Just ordered my copy. Looking forward to reading it.

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  27. Congratulations to everyone involved in this amazing project!

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  28. Thanks for hosting and congratulations on the project!

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  29. THANK YOU everyone for helping me celebrate! I'll be glowing all weekend and then some. :D (And Miranda says thank you too!)

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  30. Congratulations on this latest edition of The Best of TLD! What a labor of love these volumes are. Miranda's cover and sketches are just wonderful. I remember The Lonely Doll!

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  31. A great big hug of thanks to Michelle and Miranda! And to everyone who had a very talented hand in bringing this work of art, work of heart to life. It us truly MAGNIFICENT! I am blessed to be included between its beautiful whimsical cover. Can't wait to hold my copy and be inspired and delighted over and over and over again. THANK YOU!

    Cory

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  32. ooops . . .
    IT 'IS' truly magnificent!

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  33. It was my honor and pleasure to be able to read and help choose the included poems. Thank you, Michelle, for providing another avenue for talented poets to get their beautiful words out into the world. I'm looking forward to celebrating this collection in my post for our next Poetry Friday.

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