Genre 3 is about poetry in children's literature. A poet myself, I found this lesson particularly enjoyable. The first book I will discuss is Mirror Mirror: A Book of Reversible Verse by Marilyn Singer.
Image: Google Product Search
Bibliographic Data
Singer, Marilyn. 2010. Mirror Mirror: A Book of Reversible Verse. New York: Dutton Children's Books. ISBN: 0525479015. Illustrated by Josée Masse.
Plot Summary
The perspectives of several fairy tale characters are told in poems. When read backwards, these poems reveal the perspective of another character from the same fairy tale to provide an amusing counterview.
Critical Analysis
Written for children ages 4-8, the unique style of this book will capture the imagination of readers of all ages. Singer’s clever “reverso” poetry gives readers two opposing viewpoints to each fairy tale addressed. My favorite reverse is in her poem for Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Reading the poem down, it starts: “ASLEEP IN CUB’S BED / BLONDE / STARTLED BY BEARS, / the headline read.” Reading it backwards it becomes: “the headline read: / BEARS STARTLED / BY BLONDE / ASLEEP IN CUB’S BED.” Delightful! Every poem offers twice the entertainment for readers. Only the punctuation and grammar changes as one reads up and down, then down and up. Singer displays extraordinary writing talent and imagination by writing poems that successfully tell a story from two viewpoints and in both directions as she has done.
The poetry itself is written in simple language readily understood by young readers. The pages are split down the middle into white and yellow halves, using blue ink in the first panel to convey one point of view, and then using red ink in the second panel to signify the second perspective. The accompanying page is also split in half, first picturing the character talking in the first poem panel, then depicting the second speaker in the second half of the page. The poems are humorous, witty, and fun to read aloud.
The illustrator, Josée Masse, provides beautiful, detailed paintings for each story. Geometric shapes, lines, curves, and waves help the pictures flow from one half of the page to the other and connect the two halves while simultaneously also distinguishing them from each other. One of the most visually intriguing depictions is for the Hansel and Gretel poetry, dividing the artwork page into four squares rather than two rectangles. The diagonal corners match each other, but the top and bottoms to each half flow so well into each other that it is difficult to notice at first that there are four sections instead of two. It is an example of true artistry.
Bold primary colors are used to dazzle the eyes, and shading helps to illustrate which picture belongs to the more mischievous or “wicked” character in each pairing. Depth and visual perspective are provided in most of the paintings, making the reader feel as if one could walk into the setting and get lost there. With large font for the typeface, this book is visually pleasing in every way.
Awards
Award-winning author Marilyn Singer succeeds again with Mirror Mirror:
- 2010 Cybils Award
- Nominated for New York State Reading Association’s (NYSRA) 2012 Charlotte Award
- Nominated for the 2012 North Carolina Children's Book Award
- Nominated for the 2011-2012 Gate City Book Award
Reviews
Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books: "Talented poet Singer here creates her own poetic form, dubbed by her ‘reversos’: a verse that reveals a different poem when the lines are reversed bottom to top, with changes only in punctuation, capitalization, and line breaks. Fourteen such top-to-bottom/bottom-to-top pairings are featured, all focusing on folklore, most on particular tales, and the result is neatly, astonishingly clever."
The Horn Book: "Through a poetic invention she dubs the reverso, Singer meditates on twelve familiar folktales, and, via the magic of shifting line breaks and punctuation, their shadows. . . . In the main, the poems are both cleverly constructed and insightful about their source stories, giving us the points of view of characters rarely considered. Similarly bifurcated illustrations, Shrek-bright, face the poems.”
School Library Journal: “Gr 3-6-This appealing collection based on fairy tales is a marvel to read. It is particularly noteworthy because the poems are read in two ways: up and down. They are reverse images of themselves and work equally well in both directions. "Mirror Mirror" is chilling in that Snow White, who is looking after the Seven Dwarves, narrates the first poem of the pair. Read in reverse, it is the wicked queen who is enticing Snow White to eat the apple that will put her to sleep forever. … The vibrant artwork is painterly yet unfussy and offers hints to the characters who are narrating the poems. An endnote shows children how to create a "reverse" poem. This is a remarkably clever and versatile book that would work in any poetry or fairy-tale unit. A must-have for any library.”
Connections
Enrichment Activities
One website that offers a variety of activities for this story is: http://suzyred.com/2011_Mirror_Mirror.html
Mirror Mirror opens the opportunity to discuss perspective. You can discuss with kids how a story changes depending on who is telling it. You can read other stories to children that are told from two different characters points of view, like The Three Little Pigs (from the pigs’ perspectives) and The True Story of the Three Little Pigs (from the wolf’s perspective).
You can also discuss visual perspective, and how our world changes depending on how you look at it. Here are some websites that offer science activities for children using mirrors to explore perspective:
The author suggests readers try to write a reverso poem on their own. I took this challenge, and found it very enjoyable to do! This can be a fun activity for kids, though they may wish to write short poems at first. Here is the poem I wrote after reading this book:
Related Readings
Other books by Singer:
- Eggs by Marilyn Singer (Holiday House, 2008)
- Face Relations: Eleven Stories About Seeing Beyond Color by Marilyn Singer (Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing, 2004)
- I Believe in Water: Twelve Brushes with Religion by Marilyn Singer, Gregory Maguire, Naomi Shihab Nye and Jacqueline Woodson (HarperCollins Publishers, 2000)
- I'm Your Bus by Marilyn Singer (Scholastic Press, 2009)
- Monster Museum by Marilyn Singer (Hyperion Book CH, 2009)
- On the Same Day in March: A Tour of the World's Weather by Marilyn Singer (HarperFestival, 2001)
- Quiet Night by Marilyn Singer (Clarion Books, 2002)
- Tallulah's Tutu by Marilyn Singer (Clarion Books, 2011)
- Venom (Junior Library Guild Selection) by Marilyn Singer (Darby Creek Pub, 2007)
- What Is Your Dog Doing? by Marilyn Singer (Atheneum, 2011)
Other poetry books for kids:
- GUYKU: A Year of Haiku for Boys by Bob Raczka, (Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, 2010)
- Lemonade: and Other Poems Squeezed from a Single Word by Bob Raczka (Roaring Brook Press, 2011)
- Spot the Plot: A Riddle Book of Book Riddles by J. Patrick Lewis (Chronicle Books, 2009)
- Wolf's Coming! by Joe Kulka Publisher: Carolrhoda Books (January 10, 2007)
No comments:
Post a Comment