ALPHABET COACHING Excuse me, please! I’m eager to Address all 26 of you. I think that I heard someone say You’d like to form a poem today? There’s little doubt you’re each endowed With stellar skills! You should be proud! I’m not here to suppress your style But, rather, to enhance it while I teach you to work as a group. A lithe and lovely letter-troupe! First, some warm-ups . . . take your time. Maybe make a simple rhyme? Nice job! (Or, I mean, could be worse.) Now, can you stretch into a verse? That’s it! Oh, wait – you missed a beat. No, you don’t have two left feet! I’d never say that. I’m impressed! Fine, I can see why you’re stressed. But stress is needed. Rhythm too. Don’t choke now. There’s work to do! So, that’s it? Our session’s done? I thought that we were having fun. An artist must stick to her craft! What if we call this our first draft?
Click HERE
to read this month's interview with Melissa Manlove, Senior Editor at
Chronicle Books. Her DMC challenge is to write a poem that explores how
writing (or a book) is like something else.
Post your poem on our May 2017 padlet.
While some contributions will be featured as daily ditties this month,
all contributions will be included in a wrap-up celebration on Friday,
May 26th. Two lucky participants will win a book published by Chronicle
earlier this year: LOVING VS. VIRGINIA by Patricia Hruby Powell,
illustrated by Shadra Strickland, or LOVE IS by Diane Adams, illustrated
by Claire Keane.
Click HERE
to read last week's interview with Melissa Manlove, Senior Editor at
Chronicle Books.
Her DMC challenge:
Write a poem that explores how
writing (or a book) is like something else.
If you'd like to participate, post your poem on our May 2017 padlet.
Other comparison poems featured this week were by Margaret Simon, Brenda Davis Harsham, Jessica Bigi, and Angelique Pacheco. All contributions will be included in a wrap-up celebration on Friday,
May 26th, and two lucky participants will win either LOVING VS. VIRGINIA by Patricia Hruby Powell,
illustrated by Shadra Strickland, or LOVE IS by Diane Adams, illustrated
by Claire Keane, both published by Chronicle Books earlier this year.
Check out what's blooming at A Teaching Life. Love's in the air and the Poetry Friday roundup is ripe for picking. Thanks, Tara!
BOOK IMMERSION She dips her toe in the freezing water, A small ripple makes its way yonder. She climbs in gingerly at first Then dives right in, with a burst. She languishes and plays, She envisions mental plays. Indulging her fantasies, Her imagination sings. When it’s all over she sadly climbs out, Remembering fondly, what the book was about.
Click HERE
to read this month's interview with Melissa Manlove, Senior Editor at
Chronicle Books. Her DMC challenge is to write a poem that explores how
writing (or a book) is like something else.
Post your poem on our May 2017 padlet.
While some contributions will be featured as daily ditties this month,
all contributions will be included in a wrap-up celebration on Friday,
May 26th. Two lucky participants will win a book published by Chronicle
earlier this year: LOVING VS. VIRGINIA by Patricia Hruby Powell,
illustrated by Shadra Strickland, or LOVE IS by Diane Adams, illustrated
by Claire Keane.
BOOKS ARE FLY TRAPS OF KNOWLEDGE Each blank page is sticky and gluey, trapping each word that the writer creates. We the readers, buzzing like curious flies, becoming glued to the pages of imaginings.
Click HERE
to read this month's interview with Melissa Manlove, Senior Editor at
Chronicle Books. Her DMC challenge is to write a poem that explores how
writing (or a book) is like something else.
Post your poem on our May 2017 padlet.
While some contributions will be featured as daily ditties this month,
all contributions will be included in a wrap-up celebration on Friday,
May 26th. Two lucky participants will win a book published by Chronicle
earlier this year: LOVING VS. VIRGINIA by Patricia Hruby Powell,
illustrated by Shadra Strickland, or LOVE IS by Diane Adams, illustrated
by Claire Keane.
A RECIPE FOR POETRY Preheat the oven. Set a deadline. Measure flour, sugar, eggs. Sift emotions, moments, images. Set mixer to medium. Swirl words, rearrange, refine, redefine. Do not overmix. Avoid tunnel vision. Insert cupcake papers. Framework and structure help it rise. Fill papers to three-quarters. Do not overfill. Long division, slice away excess. Bake. Wait. Garden. Paint sunflowers. Play Vivaldi. Cool. Start a new project. Do counter-stretches. Frost. Help the original idea shine. Top with imagination: sprinkles, sugars, monkey smiles. Add jazz, pizzazz, razzle-dazzle. Taste. Take the words inside. Share. Sing them, slam them, ping them, fan them. Repeat.
Click HERE
to read this month's interview with Melissa Manlove, Senior Editor at
Chronicle Books. Her DMC challenge is to write a poem that explores how
writing (or a book) is like something else.
Post your poem on our May 2017 padlet.
While some contributions will be featured as daily ditties this month,
all contributions will be included in a wrap-up celebration on Friday,
May 26th. Two lucky participants will win a book published by Chronicle
earlier this year: LOVING VS. VIRGINIA by Patricia Hruby Powell,
illustrated by Shadra Strickland, or LOVE IS by Diane Adams, illustrated
by Claire Keane.
Click HERE to read this month's interview with Melissa Manlove, Senior Editor at Chronicle Books. Her DMC challenge is to write a poem that explores how writing (or a book) is like something else.
Post your poem on our May 2017 padlet. While some contributions will be featured as daily ditties this month, all contributions will be included in a wrap-up celebration on Friday, May 26th. Two lucky participants will win a book published by Chronicle earlier this year: LOVING VS. VIRGINIA by Patricia Hruby Powell, illustrated by Shadra Strickland, or LOVE IS by Diane Adams, illustrated by Claire Keane.
Melissa Manlove is a Senior Editor at Chronicle Books in San Francisco. She has been with Chronicle for 13 years and has 17 years of children’s bookselling experience. Her acquisitions tend to be for all ages in nonfiction; ages 0-8 for fiction.
Here is a small sampling of books she has edited in recent years:
When acquiring, Melissa looks for fresh takes on familiar topics as well
as the new and unusual. An effective approach and strong, graceful
writing are important to her, and her attraction to the music of
language means that she doesn't shy away from poetry. She has worked
with J. Patrick
Lewis, Kenn Nesbitt, Marilyn Singer, Patricia Hruby Powell, and
Elaine Magliaro, among others. Although Chronicle Books is currently open to unsolicited submissions, Melissa points out that poetry is
a tough sell these days and Chronicle's list is not a large one.
I first became aware of Melissa Manlove in 2012, with the release of Kate Coomb's Water Sings Blue and this wonderful interview by Steven Withrow. I used that interview as a jumping off point for a few of my own questions today. Another worthwhile place to visit is the Chronicle Books blog, where Melissa posts occasionally about the craft of writing. This article about Kate Messner's Over and Under the Snow describes how using poetic devices is one of a few essential components for any successful picture book manuscript.
Melissa also has a couple posts at Chronicle's blog that give you a feel for her fun-loving personality, but I think you'll get a sense of that right here. That, and how smart and passionate she is about publishing books for children.
So shall we get started? Bring on the five favorites!
Favorite childhood memory: I remember, in preschool, being asked what I was going to be when I grew up, and answering in perfect confidence, “Wonder Woman.” That’s sounded like the right answer to me ever since.
Favorite children's author: This is an impossible question, but Russell Hoban, Maurice Sendak, and Astrid Lindgren were among my favorites growing up.
Favorite subject in school:English
Favorite food:tea and chocolate
Favorite smell:freesia
What is it about children’s books that drives you to do what you do?
Books made my own childhood vastly richer.
There is nothing like finding
yourself in a book to convince you that you are—and should be—a hero.
And there’s lots of evidence that books make a tremendous difference to children—the more they read the better they do in school, the longer they stay in school, the more compassionate they’ll be, the more money they’ll make in their lives, the better their children will do in school, the longer they will live.
Reading makes us better citizens, in the marketplace, the jury box, the voting booth. Reading changes the world.
You came to children’s publishing after years as a bookseller. Even when you started at Chronicle, you continued to have an active presence at a children's bookstore doing puppet shows with your mother on weekends. What qualities do you possess as an editor that you can attribute to your bookselling experience?
Bookselling gives me a wide knowledge of the books in the marketplace
now, an understanding of what books appeal to which shoppers, and a
very useful sense of consumer behavior.
You’ve said that you “grew up on poetry.” Would you share a poem that’s meaningful to you, either from your childhood or as an adult?
It’s a fine reminder that there’s little to truly grow out of, and what we should grow into is not dignity but humor.
Five years ago, you said it was a tragedy of our educational system that most students, once they reach junior high, are shoved from the playful poetry of childhood straight into more formal poetic forms:
It’s like taking a kindergartner’s Legos away and giving him an encyclopedia to play with. Who wouldn’t resent that? There’s no question there’s plenty of fun to be had with an encyclopedia or a sonnet, but there are a lot of other toys in the spectrum of English poetry.
With the increasing popularity of novels in verse, I’m wondering if you still feel that way? From your perspective as a publisher, are you seeing any other signs of change?
I do still feel that way. And I think that common core, which I am a fan of in many ways, did a terrible disservice to poetry in the way it expects poetry to almost always be featured with stories and drama (and often offers the teacher the option of choosing stories instead of poetry) rather than insisting that poetry be an essential part of the English curriculum in all grades. Thank goodness for novels in verse! That is a bright spot. But my sense is that books of poetry (that aren’t novels) have gotten harder to publish.
Melissa Manlove at Chronicle Books, doing what she loves best.
What is one of your biggest job challenges? What about your job gives you the most satisfaction?
I suppose the biggest challenge is just the endless tide of email. Editing—thinking about text or art or the way a book will come together—is tremendously satisfying and constantly new.
Your books reflect eclectic interests, though I imagine there are common characteristics that you look for no matter the style or subject matter. Using your Spring 2017 titles as examples, can you give us an idea what some of these characteristics are? What specifically excites you about these books?
This list of books does represent a wide range of ages and topics, fiction and nonfiction, prose and poetry. But each has a voice that is unusually well-suited to its topic, and an approach that I’m confident will invite its readers in. Of these, Things to Do, Loving vs Virginia, Love Is, and Mighty, Mighty Construction Site are in verse.
Things to Do by Elaine Magliaro and illustrated by Catia Chen is a jewelbox of little poems describing a child’s day. Each is so evocative of point of view and the intense present-ness of childhood.
Loving vs Virginia is a documentary novel in verse by Patricia Hruby Powell, with artwork by Shadra Strickland. It's about the historic civil rights case, and yet its voice is so humble and so human that it lets Richard and Mildred become real people, and their story become a love story—as it should be.
Love Is by Diane Adams, illustrated by Claire Keane, is a simple and lovely tale of a girl who adopts a lost duckling. Many parents will see themselves in it, but it remains a story of growth and generosity that’s very true to children.
Mighty Mighty Construction Site is the sequel to Goodnight Goodnight Construction Site by Sherri Dusky Rinker and Tom Lechtenheld. It's as full as the first one of the tremendous satisfaction of dirt, rhyme, big machines, and teamwork.
There will also be the madcap 12 Sleighs of Christmas by Sherri Duskey Rinker, illustrated by Jake Parker, in which Santa’s
elves build a lot of hybrid sleighs (motorcycle sleighs, big rig
sleighs, submarine sleighs) in an effort to improve on the classic.
Give Me Back My Book! is an irrepressibly comic exploration of the parts of a book and the negotiations of friendship, by Travis Foster and Ethan Long.
Coming September 5, 2017, available for pre-order.
Herbert's First Halloween by Cynthia Rylant, illustrated by Steven Henry, is an endearing and empowering primer on Halloween (which is a fairly strange and unnerving holiday for the youngest children).
Hidden Dangers is a nonfiction book by Lola M. Schaefer and illustrated by Tymn Armstrong. It's about some of the world’s most dangerous animals—and is also a seek-and-find challenge.
Not only that, she has generously donated not one, but two books for lucky DMC participants!
(Winners will be selected randomly at the end of the month.)
It's time, poets. Now go do what you do best . . .
A new journey to be started. A new promise to be fulfilled. A new page to be written. Go forth unto this waiting world with pen in hand, all you young scribes, the open book awaits. Be creative. Be adventurous. Be original. And above all else, be young. For youth is your greatest weapon, your greatest tool. Use it wisely.
Post your poem that explores how writing (or a book) is like something else on our May 2017 padlet. Stop by any time during the month to add your work or to check out what others are contributing.
By posting on the padlet, you are granting me permission to share your poem on Today's Little Ditty.
Some poems will be featured as daily ditties, though authors may not be
given advanced notice. Subscribe to the blog if you'd like to keep
tabs. You can do that in the sidebar to the right where it says "Follow
TLD by Email." As always, all of the poems will be included in a wrap-up
celebration on the last Friday of the month—May 26 for our
current challenge.
TEACHERS, it's great when students get involved! Ditty of the
Month Club challenges are wonderful opportunities to learn about working
poets and authors while having fun with poetry prompts. Thank you for
spreading the word! For children under 13, please read my COPPA
compliance statement in the sidebar to the right.
FIRST-TIMERS (those who have never contributed to a ditty
challenge before), in addition to posting your work on the padlet,
please send your name and email address to TodaysLittleDitty (at) gmail
(dot) com. That way I'll be able to contact you for possible inclusion
in future Best of Today's Little Ditty anthologies.
BLOGGERS, thank you for publishing your poems on your own blogs– I
love that! Please let me know about it, so I can share your post! Also remember to include your poem (or a direct link
to your post) on the padlet in order to be included in the wrap-up
celebration and end-of-month giveaway.
Thank you to everyone who contributed poems to last month's Ditty Potluck! I was delighted and humbled that so many of you came to my party. In fact, you might want to take another lookat the poetry smorgasbord—we had about a half dozen late arrivals. Thank you to readers and writers alike for making TLD's birthday month so special!
Random.org has determined that a Best of Today's Little Ditty prize package goes to . . .
TERESA ROBESON
Congratulations, Teresa!
Jama Rattigan has a smile waiting for you at Alphabet Soup. Join her for a refreshing bite of gratitude and the Poetry Friday roundup.
