Classroom Connections with Gayle Krause (Giveaway!)

"I believe in once-upon-a-time, I believe in happily ever after."

– Lee Bennett Hopkins, from "Storyteller (For Augusta Baker)"

In his poem "Storyteller (For Augusta Baker)" from Jumping Off Library Shelves (WordSong, 2015), Lee Bennett Hopkins writes about the powerful impact stories can have on a child's life. Whether read at home, in the classroom, or at library storytime, a good fairy tale can engage girls and boys like nothing else! Needless to say, I think Lee would approve of the poetry collection being featured in today's Classroom Connections post—Once Upon a Twisted Tale, by Gayle C. Krause.

I first "met" Gayle in 2013 when I was a newbie blogger making the Poetry Friday rounds. I remember my delight at winning a gift card for a poem I submitted to her blog The Storyteller's Scroll during National Poetry Month. Since then, her work has made a few appearances on Today's Little Ditty and in The Best of Today's Little Ditty, 2014-2015, as well!

Read on to find out more about Gayle and how her madcap collection of fractured fairy tales can be used to liven up any elementary school classroom.


TODAY'S READ

Once Upon a Twisted Tale

Gayle C. Krause, Author
Caroline O'Neal, Illustrator

Clear Fork/Spork (June 18, 2019)
ISBN: 978-1950169047

For grades 1-4

Purchase at Amazon
Purchase at Barnes & Noble
Purchase via Indiebound.org





SYNOPSIS

By the middle grades, children know the storylines of familiar fairy tales, which makes them all the funnier when they veer off in different directions. Good "fractured fairy tales" twist the child reader’s perspective on the story, showing other possibilities. From a frog, who thinks he’s Sleeping Beauty, to a cool-rappin’ fairy godmother who sends Cinderella to a Hip-Hop Ball, to a boy who waits beneath a stone bridge to fool trolls, Once Upon a Twisted Tale is a rollicking, rhyme-filled poetry collection that can be read for sheer amusement or used in a classroom to compare original tales to the twisted tales as per Language Arts requirements.


A PEEK INSIDE

ONCE UPON A TWISTED TALE

You've all heard of fairy tales,

that take place in enchanted dales,

or castles on a mountain, high,

or beanstalks climbing to the sky.

But in this book they are unique.

Just turn the page and take a peek.

These characters, right or wrong—

in stories where they don't belong.

A Frog Prince and a cinder maid.

An ogress with a lice-filled braid.

A Hip-Hop Princess at a ball,

Beast's magic mirror on a wall.

A wicked queen in snow-white mist.

Stories of the wrong one kissed.

A cookie charging through the wood,

eaten by Red Riding Hood.

Sleeping princess. Clever elf.

This book won't stay upon your shelf. 

You'll want to read one hundred times

these mixed up stories, told in rhymes.

Giant, witch, and nightingale

in "Once Upon a Twisted Tale."

 Text © 2019 Gayle C. Krause, ONCE UPON A TWISTED TALE, all rights reserved. 

Illustrations © 2019 Caroline O'Neal, ONCE UPON A TWISTED TALE, all rights reserved.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: 

Gayle C. Krause writes rhyming picture books, and historical fiction and fantasy novels for middle grade and young adults. Raised in Scranton, Pennsylvania, the oldest girl on the block, she led the younger kids in creative dramatics, wilderness expeditions through fields, and fossil hunting in the shale piles left from the heyday of mining. Those early interactions led her to a career teaching preschoolers, young adults, and, as a Master Educator, prospective elementary teachers and early childhood educators at the secondary and post-secondary levels. Gayle is most comfortable in front of students, be they four years old or forty, and loves to teach children’s literature and enhance literacy skills in young readers.

CLASSROOM CONNECTIONS

Why is bringing poetry into the classroom important?

1. TO BUILD READING, SPEAKING AND LISTENING SKILLS

Children hear the rhythms and rhyme present in poems and reading fluency develops as poems are practiced and repeatedly read. Reading comprehension also results through discussions about meaning, connecting, and visualizing.

The princess acted cranky.
She hadn’t slept a wink.
She felt like she’d been sleeping
in the castle’s kitchen sink.

2. EXPLORE LANGUAGE AND VOCABULARY

Poetry often contains words that rhyme for effect. Children can learn about phonics and letter sounds by listening for and locating rhyming words. Poetry builds vocabulary.

Be ye troll or be ye trow;
tell me what you do not know.
I have a question known to none.
The answer? There is only one.
Do not look shocked at my request.
I’m quite sincere. I do not jest.

3. INSPIRE WRITING

When teachers break down poems, children learn how to follow a pattern and put words in a certain order. The simple patterns found in some poems are fun to follow and great places for children to start learning to write. Writing poetry is a transferable writing skill.

She'd fallen asleep in her cradle of ice
when a blundering prince woke her up in a trice.

Her eyes flashed open. She narrowed her sight.
She gave the prince a terrible fright.

"Excuse me, my Queen. It seems I now know,
in my confusion I've found the wrong Snow. 

4. ENCOURAGE CREATIVE THINKING

Poetry can have a positive impact on the social and emotional learning of children.

Don’t cry.                          Sister,
I’m here.                           I’ll protect you.
We’ll find the path          as we go home
together,                           hand in hand—

5. BUILD A LOVE FOR READING

Children have a natural curiosity to foster and encourage with poetry. It creates enchantment and wonder in a child’s mind. (especially if it deals with fantasy/fairytales as the subject matter.)

In this book it’s been told
of princes so bold
and maidens who hope and wait.
Of creatures who spy,
and spells gone awry,
now, you question their fairytale fate

How might your book be incorporated into an educational curriculum?

As a child, I loved fairytales. My favorite was The Twelve Dancing Princesses. I even owned a version in a Children’s Classics comic book. As a Master Educator, I taught Children’s Literature to prospective teachers at the secondary and post-secondary levels and encouraged my students to tell little-known fairytales through creative dramatics. As a children’s author, I love rhyme and the challenge of finding unique words that can be used alliteratively, while keeping a strong meter, and telling a story with no forced word, no reverse phrases, and a clever ending.

So, it wasn’t a far stretch to take the challenge of rhyming and my love of fairytales and weave them together in various poetry forms to write Once Upon a Twisted Tale. As a former teacher, I believe that this book is a treasure trove for the elementary classroom. It features a variety of poetry techniques such as: loop poetry, cleave poetry, Ghazal, haiku, couplet, and pantoum. I’ve developed a curriculum guide to accompany it, for those teachers who are interested. Contact me at info@GayleCKrause.com.

Can you suggest a specific classroom exercise related to your book?

1. Pre-reading exercises:

• What can the child decipher from the cover? 
• What do the colors and images suggest?
• Where will this story take place? 
• How many characters do you see?

2. While marketed for middle-grade children, preschool children are enamored with Caroline O’Neal’s whimsical watercolor illustrations. One three-year-old I met at a book signing loves to reread the book and make up fantastic stories for her mother through the illustrations.

© 2019 Caroline O'Neal, ONCE UPON A TWISTED TALE, all rights reserved.

What is a simple, practical tip for teachers when it comes to incorporating poetry in the classroom?

I’d suggest playing RHYME DETECTIVES.

1. Read a rhyming picture book or a poem to the class.
2. Have students clap when they hear a rhyming word.
3. Stop reading and print the rhyming pair on index cards.
4. Make a rhyme word pile.
5. When the story or poem is finished, have student volunteers rediscover the rhyming word pairs.
6. Have students create another rhyming pair from their words, making four.
7. Print the full list of rhyming words for the class.
8. Students can use these words to create an original poem.

Can you recount a specific instance of when poetry impacted a student or group of students in a positive way?

Just recently, as a guest speaker in an Early Childhood Education college class, I introduced the prospective teachers to Once Upon a Twisted Tale and offered them a simple exercise where they chose bits of colored paper from 3 different bags. One listed a fairytale character. The second offered an action. And the third offered a different fairytale character. 

I gave them time to create an “original fractured fairytale” and one of the students wrote a full rhyming text. I’m sure she will use that exercise in her own classroom.


CONNECT WITH GAYLE C. KRAUSE

Website: http://www.gayleckrause.com/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/AuthorGayleCKrause/
Twitter: @GeeCeeK
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/gayle_c_krause/
Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/krausehousebook/

Look for Gayle's other rhyming picture book out this year, Daddy, Can You See the Moon? (Clear Fork/Spork, April 2019).

Please join me in thanking Gayle for participating in our Classroom Connections series and for offering a signed copy of Once Upon a Twisted Tale, plus the accompanying curriculum guide, to one lucky Today's Little Ditty reader! (US addresses only.)

To enter, leave a comment below or send an email with the subject "Twisted Tale" to TodaysLittleDitty (at) gmail (dot) com by Tuesday, August 20th. In your comment, Gayle would love to hear your thoughts about the sampling of poems featured in this blog:

Tell me who the main fairytale character is and who you would like to see him/her paired with for a funny, rhyming redux. Maybe we can even come up with enough for a Twisted Tales, Volume II.

The winner will be selected randomly and announced next Friday, August 23rd.

Our padlet collection of song-lyric based poems has grown this week with new additions from Dianne Moritz, Madeleine Kuderick, Sydney O'Neill, Margaret Simon, and Mindy Gars Dolandis. I may even be getting better at guessing the songs... unless you guys are deliberately going easy on me! I haven't "officially" guessed more than a couple on the padlet, because I would love for others to play along too.

Today's Poetry Friday roundup at Wondering and Wandering includes a wonderful assortment of poems inspired by trees. While I had something else scheduled for today, if you're looking for more trees, I invite you to peruse our June 2015 wrap-up celebration of TREEHOUSE poems. Many thanks to Christie Wyman for hosting this week's roundup!

DMC: "Once Upon a Time" by Jane Baskwill

ONCE UPON A TIME

Once upon a fairy tale,
Once upon a magic rhyme,
Once upon and long ago,

Once upon another time,
Dragons lived upon the earth,
Mermaids swam under the seas,

Talking fish granted wishes,
Beanstalks grew from magic beans,
And there lived a red-capped girl

In a cabin by a brook;
Once upon a fairy tale,
Ever after in my book.

© 2016 Jane Baskwill. All rights reserved.


Jane Yolen has challenged us to write a septercet that features reading or writing this month. What is a septercet?  Click HERE for more details.

Post your poem on our September 2016 padlet. All contributions will be included in a wrap-up celebration on Friday, September 30th, and one lucky participant will win a personalized copy of her fabulous new collection of science poetry:

Laura Shovan: Fractured Fairy Tale Workshop

Title card from the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, via Jonathan Morris

Sorry to say we do not have Rocky and Bullwinkle with us today, but we do have someone equally entertaining (some might say more so). 

Laura Shovan is here with the next episode in her Poet in the Schools series on Today's Little Ditty— a look at a fractured fairy tale workshop she developed for the classroom.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Hi, Michelle. Thank you for inviting me back to Today's Little Ditty.

I love fairy tale retellings. One of our family favorites is Jane Yolen’s book SLEEPING UGLY—a hilarious, earthy twist on traditional princess tales.

Another is Marilyn Singer’s first book of reverso poems, MIRROR MIRROR. Marilyn uses the reverso form to tell familiar stories—Rapunzel, the Frog Prince, Beauty and the Beast—from two very different points of view. More on that later.

This spring, I put together a fractured fairy tale poetry workshop for a local third grade. We had so much fun writing these poems. The students relished the chance to give a minor or misunderstood character the chance to tell his side of a famous story. This workshop complements the persona poem lesson we discussed in my last TLD post. Instead of a postcard or image of a person to work from, we’re taking a story we know well and fleshing out an existing character.

For educators, my goal for this lesson was this:

Students will list details of a familiar story, analyze for plot holes and characterization, and use point of view to create an alternate version of the story in a narrative poem.

The classroom teachers and I started this workshop by introducing the concept of a fairy tale retelling. Students were already familiar with books, though not always aware that they fit into this specific genre. One favorite was THE TRUE STORY OF THE THREE LITTLE PIGS by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith.

Next, students generated a list of fairy tales in small groups. As a whole class, we began to discuss which characters, other than the traditional protagonist, we’d like to hear from. I love when students contribute outside-the-box ideas—letting the hill tell the story of Jack and Jill’s fall, or the porridge narrate what really happened when Goldilocks came to the bears’ house.

Using an overhead projector, I showed the students MIRROR MIRROR. We read “In the Hood” (spoken by Red Riding Hood and the Wolf) first, so students could check out the reverso form. They flipped out when they realized that the wolf’s poem is identical to Little Red’s poem—only the lines are reversed. And yet the meaning is totally different. Wow! Marilyn Singer is brilliant.

"In the Hood" from MIRROR MIRROR (Dutton Books) © 2010 Marilyn Singer, illustration © 2010 Josée Masse.
Used with permission of the author. (Click image to enlarge.)

I chose a different poem from this book for the lesson model. “Bears in the News” is a little bit longer and includes more details, which supports the lesson goal. The first half of “Bears in the News” tells the Goldilocks story from the human point of view, while the second part takes the bear family’s side.

If time permits, I like to walk younger students through the pre-writing process on the board before they head off to write their own poems. You may not need this step for fifth grade and up. We broke down the writing process in this way: 

1.    List the facts of the fairy tale.
2.    Consider possible characters.
3.    Worksheet (see below).
4.    Who is narrating?
5.    Write!
6.    Share.

Here are two first draft responses from third grade poets at Bushy Park Elementary in Glenwood, MD:

GASTON

I am very mad
because I’m not the one who’s bad.

I’m prepared to fight the beast.
At my tavern there will be a feast.

I’ll carry Belle away
and marry her today.

That’s my plan,
to be a man,

to have Belle as my wife.
Kids? Gaston Jr. will be our ninth!

PAPA BEAR

One day, I took a walk in the woods
and when I came home
my house was destroyed.
I was very mad. Who did this?
I walked around and then
I saw a little girl in my son’s bed.
Why and how could she do this?
But she’s so tiny.
Then I realized she was sleeping.
I woke her up and she screamed.
I nearly tripped over something
because she scared
the living daylights out of me.
Then, when I opened my eyes,
she was gone.  


My favorite line in this poem is “But she’s so tiny.” It communicates Papa Bear’s empathy for poor little Goldilocks beautifully.

To extend this workshop, I recommend Jane Yolen and Rebecca Kai Dotlich’s GRUMBLES FROM THE FOREST: FAIRY-TALE VOICES WITH A TWIST (WordSong, 2013). My favorite poem to share is “Whining Stepsisters Brag,” from the Cinderella story.

If you’re working with teens, check out Anna Denise’s “How to Change a Frog into a Prince” at Poetry 180 and Anne Sexton’s well-known and very dark revision of “Cinderella.”

Thank you, Laura! 
We always enjoy discovering what's in your educational toolbox.

If you're new to these parts, make sure you check out Laura's previous posts on Today's Little Ditty:

• In Defense of Great Writers
• Why I Hate Rhyme
• List Poem Workshop
• Summer Postcard Poetry
• Report from ALA Midwinter, and
• Writing Persona Poems

Laura Shovan is former editor for Little Patuxent Review and editor of two poetry anthologies. Her chapbook, Mountain, Log, Salt and Stone, won the inaugural Harriss Poetry Prize. Laura works with children as a poet-in-the-schools. The Last Fifth Grade of Emerson Elementary is her debut novel-in-verse for children (Wendy Lamb Books/Random House).

Visit her at Laura Shovan.com.

Next month Carrie Clickard will be here with a new installment in her Rhyme Crime Investigator series. If you have a question for Carrie or want to suggest a rhyme-related topic, please send an email to TodaysLittleDitty (at) gmail (dot) com, or use the contact form in the sidebar to the right.

Last Friday's interview with Jane Yolen revealed that we will be writing septercets this month. We began this week with a Two Line Tuesday from Jane, followed by septercets from Ann Magee and Linda Baie. Visit our September 2016 padlet to see all of the poems contributed so far, or to add one of your own.

Amy Ludwig VanDerwater is our gracious Poetry Friday host this week. See what's on offer at The Poem Farm.

Renée M. LaTulippe – Diction Is King: A Lyrical Language Revision Tip

Writer's Day by tihmoller and Andre F. Muller on DeviantArt

Revising your manuscript can seem like a ravenous dragon set loose in your fairy tale village. 

Just ask Janie Lazo, Sandy Lowe, Kathleen Mazurowski, or Joy Acey, whose couplets were featured this week for Penny Parker Klostermann's DMC challenge.

From the belly of the dragon, Renée LaTulippe shares a revision tip that may save your manuscript's life.

This is Renée's fourth TLD contributor post, shedding light on her 5-week online course, The Lyrical Language Lab: Punching Up Prose with Poetry.  Her next available class begins on October 26th.

Thanks as always, Renée, for sharing your insights on Today's Little Ditty!

Diction Is King: A Lyrical Language Revision Tip

by Renée M. LaTulippe

In one of my previous posts, Mood, Effect, and Emotion: Sentence Transformation, we looked at the properties of sound and how sound can transform your text.
   
Today, in the last of the “lyrical language basics” posts, we’re going to take that a step further and talk about diction, aka word choice, and how you can punch up your text during revision. Does your text feel listless? Is it suffering from a general malaise? Then it probably needs a shot of poetry—in the form of specific diction—to get it on its feet again.

If you’ve been a writer for five minutes, you have no doubt heard that your choice of verbs can make or break your text. In a nutshell:

You can find a sea of information on verbs on the Internet, so I won't go into them in more detail—because verbs aren’t the only words that need a good shakedown during revision.

The right choice of adjectives and nouns can help you show your story and reveal your characters as well as any verb. The trick is to be specific and choose loaded words—that is, words that are loaded with image, tone, and emotion.

I like to do a little exercise with my students called “unwriting,” which is when I take a small section of a text and replace all the verbs, nouns, and adjectives with run-of-the-mill choices. This exercise helps illuminate the importance of diction and how the right words can do so much of our storytelling work for us.

Let’s look at this sample from a prose picture book, which I have unwritten and then put back together. Note how the choice of specific nouns and adjectives transforms the writing.

So what’s going on here? Let’s analyze it:

• There are no adverbs in this passage. In the entire book I found only about eight, but most are unobtrusive or interesting, like generally, particularly, and brilliantly.
  
  
• The name Wilfred creates a more specific image of the main character, whereas the name Tom is neutral. Based on the name and the other language in this short passage, how do you imagine Wilfred?
  
  
• The names Marcel and Rodrigo are specific and funny, especially for a moose. Mark and Robert are fine names for everyday life, but if you’re going to get a moose, you might as well give him a name with pizzazz. The names also fit the overall tone of the book and the personality of the main character. Wilfred would not settle for a moose named Mark.
  
  
• Look at the adjectives: dumbstruck, mistaken, only proper. What does this type of language reveal about the main character? How do these choices reinforce the image you formed based solely on his name? How much more weight does dumbstruck carry vs. surprised? How are wrong and mistaken different in tone?
  
  
• The use of old lady instead of woman reveals how Wilfred feels about this intruder, this pretender to the affections of his moose. She’s not just a lady, she’s an old lady who was mistaken!
  
  
• Even in this short snippet you can see that Jeffers opted for more elevated language than one usually finds in a picture book. Through his diction, the author creates a main character who doesn’t get upset, but rather takes umbrage at perceived wrongs. This is a sophisticated MC with discerning tastes and a well-defined personality.
  
  
• Other words and phrases that contribute to this tone include generally ignored, particularly poor, maintaining a certain proximity, terrible discovery, discussed their plans, ruled out…options, perilous situations, reached a compromise, and my favorite line in the book, Embarrassed and enraged, Wilfred rushed off for home. 

This is Wilfred. He’s the one in the bowtie and suspenders. Is he anything like you imagined him?

from THIS MOOSE BELONGS TO ME by Oliver Jeffers (click to enlarge)

Give it a try!

Go through your manuscript and highlight, in two different colors, all your nouns and adjectives, and then analyze them. Are they the best, most specific choices you can make for your story and your characters? 

In the next lyrical language post, we’ll look at the revision process via some before-and-after examples. Until then, happy writing!

* * * * *

Copyright © 2015 Renée M. LaTulippe. This article is partially excerpted from lessons in the online course The Lyrical Language Lab: Punching Up Prose with Poetry. All rights reserved.

* * * * *

Would you like some more sneak peeks into The Lyrical Language Lab lessons? Check out Renée’s other posts on Today’s Little Ditty:

Sound Bites: Making Writing Musical
Mood, Effect, and Emotion: Sentence Transformation    
What Dodo Birds Can Teach Is About Meter

An editor and writer, Renée LaTulippe has co-authored nine early readers and a collection of poetry titled Lizard Lou: a collection of rhymes old and new (Moonbeam Children’s Book Award) and has poems in several editions of The Poetry Friday Anthology. She developed and teaches the online course The Lyrical Language Lab: Punching Up Prose with Poetry and blogs on children’s poetry at NoWaterRiver.com.

Dragon's not the only one who knows where to find scrumptious poetry. Join Catherine at Reading to the Core for this week's Poetry Friday roundup.

DMC: More fairy tale fare from Joy Acey

There Was an Old Dragon Who Swallowed . . .

Things from my refrigerator.
Albert Allen’s alligator.

Mr. Tobin’s fresh grown squash.
Edamame succotash.

Bacon, sausage, juicy steak,
Pudding, pies, and birthday cake.

                                                          – Penny Parker Klostermann, all rights reserved

A golden horn from Little Boy Blue.
From Cinderella, her dancing shoe.

Leaves from a bean stalk that Jack grew.
Red Riding Hood's cape and basket too.

                                                       – Joy Acey, all rights reserved


Penny Parker Klostermann has challenged us to write one to four couplets following her example– things we might feed a dragon to avoid being swallowed ourselves.  Click HERE for more details.

Send your couplets to TodaysLittleDitty (at) gmail (dot) com, or use the contact form in the sidebar to the right. All contributions will be included in a whopper of a cumulative poem featured at our wrap-up celebration on Friday, August 28th.  One lucky participant will win a personalized copy of Penny's deliciously funny debut picture book:

DMC: "Moldysocks and the Three Treehouses" by Donna JT Smith

Moldysocks and the Three Treehouses

One day when a girl named Miss Moldysocks
Was traipsing through woods and on river rocks,
She spied a big tree
With a house hanging free
With doors, except one, having paddylocks.

She climbed up the tree where she shouldn’t go;
She climbed it so quickly that don’t you know,
She couldn’t resist
And wouldn’t desist
Until she had left the ground far below!

The things in the house were just way to big;
The cupboards were stuffed for a hungry pig;
She slipped back outside
And slid down with pride
Without even breaking a single twig.

She skipped on her trip through the piney groves,
Then sat down to snack on some moldy loaves;
She looked up and saw
A house for MawMaw
With windows, and curtains and cooking stove.

She tiptoed some more till she spotted him:
A bear cub aloft on a pine tree limb;
He’d been sent away
To build his chalet,
However, his treehouse looked pretty grim.

Moldy called up to him, “What has happened here?
I see by your treehouse your plans aren’t clear.
To build it with flair
You must take more care.
I’ll help you this time!” Then bear gave a cheer!

With hammer, some nails and a tape measure
Construction began on this tree treasure;
They measured and nailed,
Through work quickly sailed,
“Thank you, Moldy!”
       “No, prob! It’s my pleasure!”

Now Moldysocks visits the bears a lot;
In her heart she has a big Moldy spot
For Bear’s treehouse done
By more than just one,
Where some days she naps in this Camelot.

© 2015 Donna JT Smith. All rights reserved.


Corey Rosen Schwartz has challenged us to write a stanza or two about building a treehouse, using unpredictable rhymes of more than one syllable. Click HERE for all the details.

Send your stanzas to TodaysLittleDitty (at) gmail (dot) com, or use the contact form in the sidebar to the right. All contributions will be included in a wrap-up celebration this Friday, June 26th, and one lucky participant will win a personalized copy of Corey's delightful new picture book:

Haiku Garden: Mary Lee Hahn

Albert Anker (1831-1910), Switzerland

 I hope your mom packed you a snack...

It's story time at the Haiku Garden!  

Make yourself comfortable while our special guest, Mary Lee Hahn, spins her magic-- a retelling of a common fairy tale in 17-syllable morsels: a Little Red Riding Hoodku.

Walter Crane (1845-1915), England

impudent mother
sending your daughter alone
into the forest

forest has safe paths
but evil lurks in shadows
deceives innocence

Carl Offtendinger (1829-1889), Germany

innocence sees sun
hears birds' sweet trilling
leaves path for flowers

flowers lead the girl 
into the heart of darkness
cause her to forget

forget your true path
even in the name of beauty
invite disaster 

Carl Larsson (1853-1919), Sweden

 

Isabel Naftel (1832-1912), U.K.

  disaster awaits

  at her grandmother's cottage

  deception, disguise

Gustave Doré (1832-1883), France

disguised as grandma

evil enchants, seduces,

takes her in one gulp

© Marjolaine Leray, 2005.  All rights reserved.

gulp! one wolf belly -
two humans inside still whole -
quite improbable

improbably, too:
the power of good triumphs
huntsman saves them both

German social welfare stamp series, 1960

both spring forth unharmed
(and certainly clean as well)
from dark into light

© The Edward Gorey Charitable Trust.  All rights reserved.

© 2014 Mary Lee Hahn.  All rights reserved

Mary Lee came up with this brilliant not-so-little ditty as part of January's Month of Poetry challenge, organized by Australian poet and children's author, Kathryn Apel.  Many thanks, Mary Lee, for bringing it with you to the Haiku Garden today!

It's said that the best teachers are also the best learners.  Mary Lee is certainly proof of that theory.  I have so much respect for Mary Lee, not only because she is able to wear teacher, blogger, and poet hats simultaneously (and wear them well), but because, for her, that is never enough.  She makes it a priority to seek out new ways to develop her skills and talents in all of these areas.  It seems like she's always doing one kind of challenge or another in order to stretch her limits, expand her horizons, or somehow better herself.  Fortunately for the rest of us, we often benefit too! 

Take the safe path to Mary Lee at A Year of Reading, and then to Poet! Poet!, where former Haiku Garden guest, Anastasia Suen, is hosting today's Poetry Friday Roundup.