CCBC-Net Archives
resending with signature ....
- Contemporary messages sorted: [ by date ] [ by subject ] [ by author ]
From: maggie_bo_at_comcast.net
Date: Thu, 05 Apr 2012 02:54:15 +0000 (UTC)
Sorry, I left my signature off my post. Not trying to be mysterious!
I have come to love novels in verse as a form, although of course I read some I love, some I enjoy, and some I don't like at all. At first, I was one who felt that, if you wrote a novel in verse--that is, if you used a lot of white space on the page, and arranged the words in a poem-y looking way--than those words better read like something worthy of being called "poetry," whatever that is. But I've gotten away from that. If I like the story, and it works, then I don't try to figure out if it's "really poetry" or not. Who cares? When Virginia Euwer Wolff wrote Make Lemonade , it did not occur to her that she was writing a novel in verse, even though it looks like one, and many critics find it strikingly poetic. She was trying to mimic dialogue, and compose something that was both accessible and realistic to an audience that she hoped would include teen girls like her protagonists.
Some novels in verse are, of course, extraordinarily poetic, and even draw attention to themselves as poetry. An example is Ron Koertge's Shakespeare Bats Cleanup and its sequel Shakespeare Makes the Playoffs, both fabulously fun. A more well-known one in this vein is Sharon Creech's Love That Dog, and its sequel Hate That Cat.
A less "poetic" novel in verse that I still very much enjoyed is Jen Bryant's Kaleidoscope Eyes. I don't find here the close attention to word choice, images, and rhythm that I do in some novels in verse, but as a story, it worked. I think the novel in verse form for books like these still serves a purpose, however: if nothing else, the form allows the author to move the story along more quickly, with fewer transitions, and to jump from scene to scene without awkwardness. (Sounds like something that might be appealing to "digital natives," doesn't it?) There is a telescoping that occurs in a novel in verse, a sense of urgency and purposefulness, a let's-get-to-the-heart-of-things mentality.
Maggie Bokelman Eagle View Middle School Librarian Mechanicsburg, PA
Received on Thu 05 Apr 2012 02:54:15 AM CDT
Date: Thu, 05 Apr 2012 02:54:15 +0000 (UTC)
Sorry, I left my signature off my post. Not trying to be mysterious!
I have come to love novels in verse as a form, although of course I read some I love, some I enjoy, and some I don't like at all. At first, I was one who felt that, if you wrote a novel in verse--that is, if you used a lot of white space on the page, and arranged the words in a poem-y looking way--than those words better read like something worthy of being called "poetry," whatever that is. But I've gotten away from that. If I like the story, and it works, then I don't try to figure out if it's "really poetry" or not. Who cares? When Virginia Euwer Wolff wrote Make Lemonade , it did not occur to her that she was writing a novel in verse, even though it looks like one, and many critics find it strikingly poetic. She was trying to mimic dialogue, and compose something that was both accessible and realistic to an audience that she hoped would include teen girls like her protagonists.
Some novels in verse are, of course, extraordinarily poetic, and even draw attention to themselves as poetry. An example is Ron Koertge's Shakespeare Bats Cleanup and its sequel Shakespeare Makes the Playoffs, both fabulously fun. A more well-known one in this vein is Sharon Creech's Love That Dog, and its sequel Hate That Cat.
A less "poetic" novel in verse that I still very much enjoyed is Jen Bryant's Kaleidoscope Eyes. I don't find here the close attention to word choice, images, and rhythm that I do in some novels in verse, but as a story, it worked. I think the novel in verse form for books like these still serves a purpose, however: if nothing else, the form allows the author to move the story along more quickly, with fewer transitions, and to jump from scene to scene without awkwardness. (Sounds like something that might be appealing to "digital natives," doesn't it?) There is a telescoping that occurs in a novel in verse, a sense of urgency and purposefulness, a let's-get-to-the-heart-of-things mentality.
Maggie Bokelman Eagle View Middle School Librarian Mechanicsburg, PA
Received on Thu 05 Apr 2012 02:54:15 AM CDT
