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What the Heart Knows
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From: Megan Schliesman <schliesman_at_education.wisc.edu>
Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2014 13:34:38 -0500
I agree with Merri that this book is just a pleasure to hold, it's so thoughtfully designed.
As for the poems... I appreciate that this collection has feelings and moments and truths that will resonate with readers from older childhood and early adolescence into the far reaches of adulthood. The span of the subjects took me by surprise!
I also appreciate the sense of formality in the poems, conveyed through structure and language and often the use of repetition. What this says to me as a reader--and I hope to children and teens--is that chants and charms and lamentations and blessings are serious things. That doesn't mean they can't have a sense of whimsy, and a number of these poems do. But their formailty, while not rigid, strikes me as a way to convey the seriousness of the power of language when it is being used with intent.
(And don't we wish it was always used with intent :)
Here are a few of my favorite moments:
from "A List of Things That Will Set you Free":
"Caring. / Not caring."
from "Invisilbity Spell":
"It is spring. / I belong to the air. / I step from my body, / invisible."
from "Gift Spell":
"Whatever it is let it shrink down small and hard and cold. Let it have metal teeth and a whiff of speed. Let it slip with a sweet jingle into my battered jeans as I run for the garage.
"That box. It looks like something else. But let it be freedom."
Remembering sixteen (it was always a sweater),
Megan
Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2014 13:34:38 -0500
I agree with Merri that this book is just a pleasure to hold, it's so thoughtfully designed.
As for the poems... I appreciate that this collection has feelings and moments and truths that will resonate with readers from older childhood and early adolescence into the far reaches of adulthood. The span of the subjects took me by surprise!
I also appreciate the sense of formality in the poems, conveyed through structure and language and often the use of repetition. What this says to me as a reader--and I hope to children and teens--is that chants and charms and lamentations and blessings are serious things. That doesn't mean they can't have a sense of whimsy, and a number of these poems do. But their formailty, while not rigid, strikes me as a way to convey the seriousness of the power of language when it is being used with intent.
(And don't we wish it was always used with intent :)
Here are a few of my favorite moments:
from "A List of Things That Will Set you Free":
"Caring. / Not caring."
from "Invisilbity Spell":
"It is spring. / I belong to the air. / I step from my body, / invisible."
from "Gift Spell":
"Whatever it is let it shrink down small and hard and cold. Let it have metal teeth and a whiff of speed. Let it slip with a sweet jingle into my battered jeans as I run for the garage.
"That box. It looks like something else. But let it be freedom."
Remembering sixteen (it was always a sweater),
Megan
--
Megan Schliesman, Librarian
Cooperative Children's Book Center
School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison
600 N. Park Street, Room 4290
Madison, WI 53706
608/262-9503
schliesman_at_education.wisc.edu
www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/
My regular hours are T-F, 8-4:30.
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Received on Tue 22 Apr 2014 01:34:59 PM CDT
