From: Dean Schneider <schneiderd>
Date: Thu, 15 Sep 2005 15:15:37 -0500

The Other Side: Shorter Poems is my favorite of Angela Johnson's many fine works. Its 33 poems tell of the town of Shorter, Alabama, about to be torn down to make way for a dog track. It's about growing up there and the people, places, and moments that offer the sense of one small place, along with the photographs from Johnson's private collection. As she says in the preface: "My poetry doesn't sing the song of the sonnets, but then I sing a different kind of music - which is what it's all about anyway."

 

I read the book with my 7th graders, simply dividing up the poems among the students and having them read them aloud as informal theater or reader's theater. Then, some of the poems serve as models for students' own poetry writing. Certain poems start with lines that can be poetry starters for kids:

 

"It's hard growing up in a family that....."

"Every day after school I....."

"You'd have to be crazy to want to...."

 

 

Students might also try poems about grandmothers and uncles, neighbors, parents, and friends, modeled upon those in the book.

 

As in her other books, Angela Johnson writes with "powerful simplicity," to use Megan Schliesman's perfect description.

 

Dean Schneider

Ensworth School

Nashville, Tennessee

schneiderd at ensworth.com .

 
Received on Thu 15 Sep 2005 03:15:37 PM CDT