Book Love: SOUTHWEST SUNRISE + the Poetry Friday Roundup

"Visitors Welcome"               Photo: Nikki Grimes

Welcome to the Poetry Friday roundup and to New Mexico, the land of enchantment. Today we're celebrating the exquisite beauty of Nikki Grimes's latest release, hot off the press, Southwest Sunrise.

SOUTHWEST SUNRISE (Bloomsbury, May 5, 2020)
Order online via the publisher, at Amazon.com
or at Bookshop.org (supporting independent bookstores)

From Children's Literature Legacy Award winner Nikki Grimes and highly-acclaimed illustrator Wendell Minor comes a stunning picture book about the beauty of the natural world and finding a new place to call home.

The beauty of the natural world is just waiting to be discovered . . .

When Jayden touches down in New Mexico, he's uncertain how this place could ever be home. But if he takes a walk outside, he just might find something glorious.

Flowers in bright shades . . .
Birds and lizards and turtles, all with a story to tell . . .
Red rock pillars towering in the distance . . .
Turquoise sky as far as the eye can see . . .

Perhaps this place could be home after all.

Gorgeously poetic and visually stunning, this story from acclaimed creators Nikki Grimes and Wendell Minor celebrates the beauty of the Southwest as a young boy sees it for the very first time.

I lived in Socorro, New Mexico from 1998-2002, and like the young protagonist in Southwest Sunrise, I fell unexpectedly in love with the landscape. Surrounded by desert on three sides and big sky overhead—

View from the front porch. This is the rainbow that greeted us when
we arrived home from the hospital with my first born in May of 2000.

An abundance of blooms—and the desert off to our right.

"M" mountain (which I've written about here) was our view from the back patio.
I loved watching roadrunners and families of quail scoot along the back fence.

New Mexico will always be one of my favorite places to feel grounded, inspired and awed. More than any other home, New Mexico soothed my spirit.

Photo credit: Aaron Lemen

Apparently Nikki Grimes was affected similarly by the beauty and intrigue of the Southwest. I'm delighted to welcome her to Today's Little Ditty to talk more about her inspiration for writing Southwest Sunrise.

Knowing me as she does, she even went so far as to include a poetry challenge at the end of her post! Please leave your poem in the comments if you wish. We'd both love to read them.









Story. For me, poetry is always about story. From the earliest years of writing, I challenged myself to paint a picture or tell a story using as few words as possible. I still do.

The inspiration for my narrative poetry comes from everywhere. Sometimes I'm sculpting a memory from the past, at other times, I'm molding a moment from the present. In either case, I keep my eye out for something that will spark my imagination, some thing that will lead to a nugget of story.

In writing Southwest Sunrise, my newest title, I drew from the landscape, flora, and fauna of the Southwest, itself, as did illustrator Wendell Minor. Many an artist and poet have been inspired by the sensual treasures of that environment. (There's a reason the region is known as O'Keeffe Country!)

Adobe houses,

Photo: Nikki Grimes

red-rock mountain ranges,

Photo: Nikki Grimes

and flowers with names like Fire Wheel, Calypso, Wine Cup, and Yellow Bell certainly got me going.

From SOUTHWEST SUNRISE. Text copyright © 2020 by Nikki Grimes. Illustrations copyright © 2020 by Wendell Minor.
Reproduced by permission of Bloomsbury Children’s Books. (Click on image to enlarge.)

Wait!  There's the one
called Wine Cup
spilling its burgundy beauty
for me to drink up.

And aren't those Yellow bells?
They wake up the desert
with their silent ring.

There's a patch of Calypso Orchids...
dancing purple in the wind...

Photo: Nikki Grimes

If the landscape with its sun-bleached bones, and the flora doesn't spark your imagination, the animal life will. There are prehistoric looking lizards, elegant ravens, and those morning noise-makers, the magpies.  All of these sparked ideas for poems.  Here are two.

From SOUTHWEST SUNRISE. Text copyright © 2020 by Nikki Grimes. Illustrations copyright © 2020 by Wendell Minor.
Reproduced by permission of Bloomsbury Children’s Books. (Click on image to enlarge.)

I shiver from the silence
unbroken by
the familiar sound of sirens—
but not for long.
A few yards down the road,
I pick up the mad chatter
of winged gossips
passing secrets
from one unfamiliar tree to another.
The guidebook calls them
Pinion trees.

From SOUTHWEST SUNRISE. Illustration © 2020 by Wendell Minor.

Someone should tell these
flying chatterboxes
Magpies are beautiful
when their beaks are still,
when they sail on air
and write across the sky
with the long black tips
of their tails.


TODAY'S CHALLENGE: 
Try to find a story in one of the images I brought back from the Southwest, or one of Wendell's paintings, then write a poem about it. Any form of poem will do, but you get bonus points if you can paint a picture or tell a story in a haiku or tanka poem. Whatever form you choose, have fun!


For more about Southwest Sunrise, visit NikkiGrimes.com to read starred reviews from Kirkus and School Library Journal. I also recommend visiting Poetry for Children and A Fuse 8 Production for two other guest blog posts.

For more about Nikki Grimes at Today's Little Ditty, you can read our Spotlight ON interview (featuring Poems in the Attic), our Classroom Connections Q&A (featuring Bronx Masquerade and Between the Lines), and my Book Love review (featuring Words with Wings).

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Not surprisingly, Margaret Simon's May challenge to "write a mindful poem about the present moment" has really taken off, both on the padlet and on Twitter using the hashtag #PoemsofPresence. Click HERE for more details about the challenge and to read Margaret's Reader Spotlight interview. Featured daily ditties this week included poems by Heidi Mordhorst, Linda Baie, and Rebekah Hoeft, plus an applicable Two Line Tuesday with a quote by Elizabeth Appell.

Feel free to grab and use this logo I designed for blog posts, etc.