Leap into Poetry: More ABCs of Poetry

ANNOTATION

Defines and provides examples of various forms and techniques of poetry, such as ballad, epitaph, and palindrome, from Alliteration to Z�ejel.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Leap into Poetry is for anyone who delights in playing with words. Avis Harley celebrates the world of tiny creatures in this fresh collection of original poetry. Each letter of the alphabet introduces an insect or a spider along with its corresponding poetic form -- from ants to zebra butterflies. Fledgling poets of all ages will be inspired to try their wings and discover new pleasures in language structure. Readers are encouraged to interact with the ideas and enjoy the fun of exploring different forms. Ms. Harley's lively, colorful illustrations complement the rich content of her poetry.

SYNOPSIS

A collection of verse that defines and provides examples of various poetic forms and techniques.

FROM THE CRITICS

Sherie Posesorski - the author of ESCAPE PLANS, a children's novel

from QUILL & QUIRE: Although adults may have forgotten this, any child who's been captivated by the rhymes, rhythms, riddles, and wordplay of Dennis Lee, Mother Goose, or Dr. Seuss instinctively knows that 'spieltrieb' (as the German critic Baumgarten called the impulse to play) is central to poetry.

In LEAP INTO POETRY, Vancouver poet, illustrator, and teacher Avis Harley adeptly demonstrates and defines the many playful pleasures of poetry. Using an alphabetical format, each of Harley's poems, which feature insects and spiders, embodies a poetic form, technique, or device. The book is a cleverly inventive amalgam of poetic glossary, entertaining poetry, and insect encyclopedia.

The insect poems delineate familiar poetic terms, like alliteration in a poem about ants catching sight of an amber necklace with an ancestor encased in a brooch, and the ballad form in a poem about a bluebottle fly. Most fun is Harley's treatment of uncommon poetic forms like the clerihew (a biographical poem) in a poem about Lambert the crane fly who falls in love with a light bulb. "My love turns on when twilight dims. Watt fun!" Harley makes the gradatio technique (a parallel construction of ideas in ascending order) crystal clear in a poem about a restless grasshopper: "I twitch. I hop. I leap. I fly."

Harley's lively, charming poems dexterously explain what could have been esoteric terms in an easly understandable and vividly concrete fashion. They are accompanied by her whimsical, colourful portrait gallery of eccentric insects.

In her poem illustrating the zejel form, Harley describes the beauty of a zebra butterfly in flight, and wonders "who can capture such a pleasure?" Harley does, and her poems show children all the fun there is in the chase of the right words and ways to make a poem.

School Library Journal

Gr 3-6-In this companion to Fly with Poetry (Boyds Mills, 2000), Harley presents 26 poems about insects, each demonstrating a poetic form or literary term, in an alphabetical arrangement. "Iamb," "Jargon," "Karanamala," and "List Poem" indicate the variety of ideas she introduces, from broad to specific terms dealing with parts or the whole of a poem. Each term is defined in a single line across the bottom of the page, which won't always be enough to communicate the concept to readers, even with the poem as an example. For instance, the definition of an iamb may be difficult for some youngsters to understand without an illustration of the scansion. In Harley's example, the iambs mostly fall across the words that, taken on their own out of context of the line, are actually trochees-the opposite of iambs. For "Alliteration," the example uses the vowel "a" in an imprecise demonstration of the term, since her letter "a" makes different sounds throughout the poem. Harley finishes with a "Did You Know?" section about the insects, confusing the scope of the book. Too bad-her poems are fun, as are her colorful illustrations, and they may inspire kids to create poetry of their own. However, her explanations of terms are not adequate for young writers working independently. Direct them to more comprehensive sources for help, such as X. J. and Dorothy Kennedy's Knock at a Star (Little, Brown, 2001) or Paul Janeczko's How to Write Poetry (Scholastic, 2001).-Nina Lindsay, Oakland Public Library, CA Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews