From: Angelica Carpenter <angelica>
Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2000 09:12:21 -0700

Booklist for March 15, 2000, has "Spotlight on Poetry" as a theme for this issue. It offers reviews of two books about Edna St. Vincent Millay that may help fill the gap in the study of women poets. Robert Burleigh's _Edna_, listed as for grades 4-6, is a picture book, gets a rather mixed review. _Edna St. Vincent Millay_, edited by Frances Schoonmaker (Sterling, 2000) considers her life and works and the illustrations are called "luminous." I attended a children's recitation festival here yesterday, sponsored by the Communications Department. Kids are bussed in from all over the San Joachin Valley for the finals of the Peachblossom Festival. Finalists perform in small groups, and are judged by college drama students. The two students who judged the group I saw were so charming, supportive, funny, etc. that it was truly a moving experience to see them interact with these elementary school kids. They then rate the kids on a form, giving ratings of excellent, superior, etc. No bad ratings, just praise for good work, like good eye contact, varying voice levels, carrying on despite interruptions, etc. It's not a competition--the kids just get ratings. We saw about 6 performances and the most successful, by far, were partner poems. Paul Fleishman's poem about the life of a bee was a riot as was another about
"If you take a giraffe and you stretch him by half" (maybe these are not quite the right words, but I think this is a Shel Silverstein poem) worked equally well as told by pairs of children. This experience recharge my batteries! Happy Friday,

Angelica Carpenter, Curator Arne Nixon Center for the Study of Children's Literature Henry Madden Library California State University, Fresno 5200 N. Barton Ave., M/S-ML 34 Fresno, CA 93740?14

Phone 559 278?16 Fax 559 278i52 Email angelica at csufresno.edu
Received on Fri 14 Apr 2000 11:12:21 AM CDT