Today Caramel is talking to Sprinkles about Alamo All-Stars by Nathan Hale, published first in 2016. This is the sixth book in Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales series, and thankfully the sixth book Caramel happened to read from the series. (So finally these numberings match!)
Sprinkles: So here we are, talking about yet another Nathan Hale book.
Caramel: Yes! And this one is also a great book!
S: Oh, yes? So you have enjoyed reading about the Alamo? Isn’t that supposed to be a story of a big defeat?
C: Yes, but a very heroic one! And at the end of the book, the author ties things up by telling us how the U.S. in the end did win over Texas. So they lost Alamo first, but eventually they won it back. Kind of like losing the battle and winning the war.
S: I see. But it was also probably a heroic win for the other side, at least the stand at Alamo.
C: I suppose. You are right. All wars have at least two sides. When one side wins and celebrates, the other side is losing and facing great difficulties. So I like reading about wars and history, but it would be best if there were no wars. I think we can say that we have had enough wars. Maybe we do not need any more.
S: Such wise words from a little bunny…
Caramel is reading Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales #6: Alamo All-Stars by Nathan Hale.
S: Okay, so this book is all yellow!
C: Yes, you said last time that each book has one thematic color, so maybe you were right. This is the yellow book. There are other colors in the book too, of course but yellow is a lot more visible in this book than the others.
S: Is there any humor in the book? I mean it is about war and death again, but …
C: Yes. At least there are some light-hearted moments. And it does not feel as heavy as Donner Dinner Party.
S: I think that can be arranged. But maybe we can take a short break for a bit.
C: What are you trying to tell me Sprinkles?
S: Me? Nothing. Maybe there are other books you could read for the next week or two.
C: Maybe. Or maybe not. I do like these books!
S: I know. But maybe we can try a few other books for a bit.
C: I see what you are doing. And I guess we will see what you find for me to read for next week.
S: I mean, I won’t force you.
C: Hmm.
S: Okay, maybe this is a good time to stop talking about this book and wrap this review up. What would you like to tell our readers?
C: Stay tuned for more book bunny reviews!
Caramel enjoyed reading Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales #6: Alamo All-Stars by Nathan Hale and looks forward to reading many more historical graphic novels in the near future.
A chapbook is a small book, typically a collection of poems, typically within twenty to forty pages, sometimes organized around a theme, sometimes not. Even though chapbooks have a long and storied past, here at the book bunnies blog, we have not had the occasion to review any till now. And Sleeping With Dogs: A Poetic Memoir is just right for a blog hosted by bunnies!
This is indeed a little book of forty pages, with a cute pink cover; on the cover is a stylized image of a woman in a patch of a bed, sleeping surrounded by six little dogs, some curled up, some fully awake and curiously staring at the observer / reader. The patch of bed is covered with little pink hearts. So already you might imagine, this book is not only about dogs (as you probably had already figured out from the title) but it is also very much about love. And indeed love is the overwhelming theme of the book.
Barbara Barth’s writing journey began when she lost her husband in 2008. She began writing but also she began adopting dogs. Words and dogs became her lifelines. This chapbook collects her free verse poetry about her dogs and herself growing into the woman she is today with her dogs. Barth tells us the stories of Foxy-Lady, who knew her husband before he passed away, Bray, the first adoptee after, and many many others, via simple but evocative sentence fragments, which somehow come together into fluid free verse.
Out of the twenty-three poems in the chapbook, ten are written as odes to specific dogs: “Foxy-Lady” (2), “Bray” (5), “Annabelle” (6), “Queen Chloe” (7), “Odette” (10), “A Dog Named Studly” (11), “The Last of the Big Dogs” (12), “The Christmas Gift” (13), “Carmella” (17), “PS. Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” (23). Each of these ten poems introduces its subject, a dog with their own personal back story, and tells the story of how they came to join Barth and her life. Most of the dogs are rescues, so often the back stories are sad or uncertain at times, but most of these poems end with joy, joy of a once-sad dog having found a new home that welcomes them. (Carmella shows up again in “Morning” (19) as the mischievous main character, crafty and still lovable.)
Then there are two poems, about two dogs each, that tell stories of new members joining a big happy family and making it happier. “One Week Two Dogs” (8) tells the story of how Barth first met Rascal and April on the same day, but took them home on two separate days. April immediately becomes Miss April in Paris, and they both find themselves full members of the growing new family Barth has been building around her. “Dumb and Dumber” (14) tells the story of how father-and-son duo Moe and Happy Dog, join the family. The Dumb and Dumber become loving nicknames to them and celebrate their natural silliness as they like to fool around.
The rest of the poems are not focused on individual dogs. Rather they tell the story of Barth’s life today, full with dogs and dog love. The very first poem in the chapbook, “”Why I Write” (1) introduces Barth to us a bit more. After having read the brief prose introduction to the collection, this poem eases us into the poetic form. “Sleeping With Dogs” (3) and “Six-Pack” (4) set the tone early towards the beginning of the chapbook, telling us how the dogs came to Barth’s life and made it whole. “Chihuahua Love” (9) tells us of her transformation from a “dog lady with big dogs” to a “dog lady with chihuahuas”. “Storm” (15) and “After the Rain” (16) tell us what happens in her household during and after a rainstorm. “Night Moves” (18), “Morning” (19), “Patio View” (20), and “Four Seasons” (21) offer more snapshots of her life with her dogs: a full life filled with love and joy and many other intense emotions lived in the moment. Finally “Paint Party” (22) tells us what Barth might just be doing today in her home: painting, with her four-legged friends surrounding her, content.
Being a household of four bunnies we do not have any dogs living with us. We are typically very timid near four-legged creatures who are bigger than ourselves. But Barth makes the best case for inviting dogs into your life. She does not preach or explain. She just tells her own story, in which she happens to find love over and over and over again. (Of course one imagines she is giving a lot of love back. It is impossible for this much love to flow only in one direction.)
All in all, I have very much appreciated the opportunity to read and review Sleeping With Dogs: A Poetic Memoir. And I’d recommend it highly to all sorts of folks, young bunnies and old bunnies, and everyone in between. I know that the little bunnies in my own household will love the book just as much as I did. If you like reading poetry, or if you love dogs, it is probably a no-brainer: you should read this book. Otherwise, if you just happen to have only a little space in your day to read a couple short pages at a time, then this little pink book might just be what you need to fill your heart with some joy.
Sprinkles has read Sleeping With Dogs: A Poetic Memoir by Barbara Barth, as part of a blog tour hosted by Women on Writing, and recommends it highly to all bunnies great and small.
Given the morbid nature of the historical events described (involving death and cannibalism), this review might not be appropriate for very young bunnies.
Caramel reviews Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales #5: Donner Dinner Party by Nathan Hale.
Sprinkles: So Caramel, it seems like it is once again time to talk about a Nathan Hale book.
Caramel: Yes! It is great that I can read another one of Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales.
S: I know you love these books! So tell me, what is this one about?
C: It is about the people going to California in 1846.
S: Oh, I see, so this is about the Donner party, going west toward California and getting lost?
C:Yes it is.
S: So the dinner party part is kind of poking fun at the rumors that some of them ended up eating others?
C: Yes, but it is not a very funny joke in terms of what it means. And it is not rumors; the Wikipedia article says they actually ate some of those who died because they were weaker, but they apparently also killed two Native American guides and ate them.
S: Caramel, that is awful!
C: Yep, and disturbing.
S: I mean, the other books you read in this series also had people dying, there were many wars and such, but this somehow feels a lot more morbid.
C: Yep, it does. But apparently history can be pretty terrible.
S: I can see that this book is making that quite clear.
C: Yep, it certainly did for me.
Caramel is reading Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales #5: Donner Dinner Party by Nathan Hale.
S: So was reading this book a bit more challenging then? The story is pretty disturbing.
C: Yeah, it was a little, but the scary parts are mainly on a couple pages, making them easy to skip.
S: And it seems like an important story, about how humans can get quite vicious and terrible when they are desperate.
C: Yeah humans are sometimes very mean to each other, which is not a good thing.
S: I mean when you read Watership Down, we saw there that bunnies can also be cruel to one another, but at least we would never eat each other. We are vegetarian.
C: And I guess I will have to remind you that Watership Down was fiction, Sprinkles. This book is about a real event!
S: I know I know. I was just trying to lighten up the mood, but it is pretty difficult. So let us talk about the book in general. I suppose you had heard of the Donner party before. Did you learn anything new while reading Donner Dinner Party?
C: Yep, that sometimes the people in the past, and sometimes now, can be very mean to others.
S: So true. And so sad… Okay, I will now shift gears because this is getting a bit too sad. It seems these books are in color but always only a couple colors show up on each two-page spread. Is that correct?
C: yep, this one had around 8 different colors total.
S: But only a couple of the colors showing up on one page, right?
C: Yep, at most maybe 2-3 colors on one page.
S: But it still seems to work well, right?
C: Yes, it feels colorful at least.
S: After this I think there are still a few more books in this series. Are you interested?
C: Yeah, I can’t imagine there will be too many more cannibal stories in there.
S: I agree. Okay, so let us wrap this up then. What would you like to tell our readers?
C: Stay tuned for more book bunny reviews!
Caramel appreciated reading Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales #5: Donner Dinner Party by Nathan Hale and is ready for another adventure.
Today Sprinkles reviews three poetry anthologies that can help young bunnies get acquainted with a great many wonderful poems all at once: 101 Great American Poems collated by the American Poetry & Literacy Project, Favorite American Poems edited by Paul Negri, and How to Eat A Poem: A Smorgasbord of Tasty and Delicious Poems for Young People edited by the American Poetry & Literacy Project and the Academy of American Poets.
Sprinkles reviews 101 Great American Poems collated by the American Poetry & Literacy Project, Favorite American Poems edited by Paul Negri, and How to Eat A Poem: A Smorgasbord of Tasty and Delicious Poems for Young People edited by the American Poetry & Literacy Project and the Academy of American Poets.
How poetry comes into one’s life will differ from one bunny to another. But hopefully some day you find yourself interested in a poem. A poem that makes you think differently or feel very strongly about something. And that makes you think, hmm, maybe I could enjoy this poetry thing. But there is a whole wide world of poetry out there. Where do you start? Anthologies might help. So today I want to share with you some thoughts about three poetry anthologies that young readers might find of interest.
The first one I will write about is 101 Great American Poems, collated by the American Poetry & Literacy Project, and published originally in 1998 by Dover. Maybe you are aware that Dover is a publisher that specializes in republishing classical works that have been out of print for a while. However, 101 Great American Poems is a new anthology, first published by Dover. In fact all three books I am reviewing today are published by Dover in the same manner. I am glad Dover does publish original works, too, especially because they are often clean books sold at very reasonable prices.
Sprinkles reviews 101 Great American Poems collated by the American Poetry & Literacy Project.
Anyways, let us get back to 101 Great American Poems. As you can tell, the book is a collection of one hundred and one poems from thirty-nine American poets ranging from colonial times to early twentieth century. The poems are organized by their authors, who themselves are organized according to their birth years. So the book starts with a poem “To My Dear and Loving Husband” by Anne Bradstreet, who was born in England in 1612 and was one of the early colonialists in America, and ends with “The Unknown Citizen” by W.H. Auden who was born in England in 1907 and wrote this poem in 1939 soon after he moved to the United States. Each poet is introduced with a couple sentences of biographical context, and then we are offered one to ten poems from each. About seventeen poets have one poem under their names (including one from Abraham Lincoln, who one might or might not have expected to find in a poetry anthology), while two have ten (Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost). Most other folks are represented by two to three poems.
Sprinkles is reading 101 Great American Poems collated by the American Poetry & Literacy Project.
We have here a collection of mainly classical American poetry. Well-known poet names like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Gertrude Stein, Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, Marianne Moore, T.S. Elliot, E.E. Cummings, and Langston Hughes are accompanied by names that some of us might not be as familiar with. And even from those names that might be familiar, we might get new poems, that might not have shown up in our own studies of poetry in school but will open up whole new worlds for us if we let them.
In the introduction to 101 Great American Poems, the poet Joseph Brodsky is quoted to have said that “Books find their readers, and if not, well, let them lie around, absorb dust, rot, and disintegrate. There is always going to be a child who will fish a book out from the garbage heap.” The introduction ends: “Books wear out. Great poets pass away. But the spirit of poetry is indestructible.” This book is a neat collection that could help a young person reach in and find that one poem (or three) that will bloom new flowers in their heart.
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Next up, I want to say a few words about Favorite American Poems, edited by Paul Negri. First published in 2002, the version I read is a large-print one, “designed for those who need or prefer large print and meets the standards of the National Association for the Visually Handicapped.” I must say that having quite poor eye sight myself, I find large-print books very much more accessible. And for a poetry book, the format works really well, even if you do not often need large print.
Sprinkles reviews Favorite American Poems edited by Paul Negri.
The book is organized again in terms of the poets, and the poets are listed once more in the order of their birth years. There is much overlap in between these two books, and so you will not be surprised to hear for example that the first poet presented is Anne Bradstreet again, with her “To My Dear and Loving Husband”. This one showcases thirty-four poets, and the big names in the previous book show up all here too. But this book has poems from John Greenleaf Whittier, Jones Very, Henry David Thoreau, Julia Ward Howe (“Battle Hymn of the Republic” had to appear of course!) and James Whitcomb Riley, who did not show up in 101 Great American Poets. On the other hand, we do not get to read poems from Abraham Lincoln, Sara Teasdale, Robinson Jeffers, Marianne Moore, Archibald MacLeish, E.E. Cummings, Jean Toomer, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and W.H. Auden.
Sprinkles is reading Favorite American Poems edited by Paul Negri.
Biographical notes of the overlapping poets are mostly if not all identical. Poem selections also overlap but not completely. For example the same ten poems from Emily Dickinson, the same seven from Walt Whitman, and the same five from Edgar Allan Poe show up in both books, but both Oliver Wendell Holmes and Ell Wheeler Wilcox are represented by two poems in Favorite American Poems while only one per is showcased in 101 Great American Poems. Favorite American Poems seems to showcase more poems for the same poets in general, while 101 Great American Poems perhaps tries to be more selective.
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The third book I will talk about is How to Eat A Poem: A Smorgasbord of Tasty and Delicious Poems for Young People, edited by the American Poetry & Literacy Project and the Academy of American Poets. First published in 2006, this book is more explicitly directed towards young readers and it shows, not only in the title but also in the way the poems are organized and presented.
Sprinkles reviews How to Eat A Poem: A Smorgasbord of Tasty and Delicious Poems for Young People, edited by the American Poetry & Literacy Project and the Academy of American Poets.
Unlike the first two books I reviewed above, How to Eat a Poem is organized around themes. The seventy poems in the book are categorized into four groups. The first group is titled “Magic Words: Poems about poetry, books, words, and imagination”. This section contains the poem that gives the book its title: “How to Eat a Poem” by Eve Merriam. The second group is collected under the title: “My Heart Leaps Up: Poems about the beauty of the natural world”. This section starts with William Wordsworth’s poem “My Heart Leaps Up When I behold” which gives the section its title. It also contains four simple and beautiful haiku as well as several famous poems like “The Tyger” by William Blake and “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” by Walt Whitman. This is also where “The Desert is My Mother” by Pat Mora appears side by side with its Spanish version.
Sprinkles is reading “The Desert is My Mother,” and its Spanish version, by Pat Mora in How to Eat A Poem: A Smorgasbord of Tasty and Delicious Poems for Young People, edited by the American Poetry & Literacy Project and the Academy of American Poets.
The third section is titled “I Think Over Again My Small Adventures: Poems about travel, adventure, sports, and play”. In here we find the poem that gives the section its title: “I Think Over Again My Small Adventures”. a poem of Native American origin with its original composer unknown. Here we also find a poem by Shel Silverstein (“Sick”), another by Langston Hughes (“Harlem Night Song”) and another by Elizabeth Bishop (“One Art”). The last thematic section is titled “Hope is the Thing With Feathers: Poems about love, friendship, sadness, hope and other emotions,” and as you might imagine, it contains Emily Dickinson’s “Hope is the Thing with Feathers”. It also contains Edgar Allan Poe’s “Annabel Lee”and several others that explore a wild range of emotions. The poets in this book are a lot more diverse, in their national, ethnic, and historical origins. And the goal seems to be to show to the young reader that poetry is fun and worthwhile.
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Overall I think all three books do well what they set out to do. 101 Great American Poems starts with the poet Joseph Brodsky asserting that “poetry must be available to the public in far greater volume than it is.” In Favorite American Poems, we are told that “we read poetry because at its best, it lives and sings.” And as we are told in the foreword to How to Read A Poem, poet Ted Kooser tells us that poetry “should be fun”. I believe these ideas are very well represented by each of these books.
I think the youngest bunnies may benefit from starting with How to Eat a Poem, and any bunny may decide to pick one or the other between 101 Great American Poems and Favorite American Poems. But make sure you get your paws on at least one of these books, and leave them lying around in the house. The young paws will eventually reach them and start reading. And then their journeys into the world of poetry will really take off.
Sprinkles recommends that readers check out at least one of the three books mentioned here: 101 Great American Poems collated by the American Poetry & Literacy Project, Favorite American Poems edited by Paul Negri, and How to Eat A Poem: A Smorgasbord of Tasty and Delicious Poems for Young People edited by the American Poetry & Literacy Project and the Academy of American Poets.
