This is Just to Say - Joyce Sidman

POETRY
Illustrator: Pamela Zagarenski
2007
48 Pgs.
Rating: 5
For: Middle Grades
Endpapers: Azure

18 poems of apology, followed by 17 responses (one is a poem for two voices) - written to and from the students in Ms. Merz's class. They show the give and take that go on in relationships - between friends, siblings, parent and child, teacher and student, pet owner and pet. These are the inner thinkings of the kids in a class, and I read through it twice with delight. It's really splendid.

The book opens with William Carlos Willim's "This is Just to Say," an all-time favorite of mine, which is a model for the poems to follow:


This is Just to Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgve me
they were delicous
so sweet
and so cold.

-----William Carlos Williams

The illustrations are very, very different- creative and fun. They appear to be collaged onto the page; bits and pieces of drawings on graph paper, notebook paper, ripped construction papers, dictionary pages. Colored-in line drawings rubber stamping, paint and creativity cover the edge-to-edge colored backgrounds. It's an picture book/altered-book-lover's dream.

I will include a poem of apology and its response. It was VERY difficult to choose which to include, so I went through and read all the poems for a delightful third time.

To Manga, My Hamster

I wish I could set you free
like that day you escaped
and ran all over the house.
That was an amazing day.
My mother screamed.
My sister cried.
All because you were loose somewhere,
burrowing through pillows and toys.

When Mom finally found you
huddled in the mop bucket
(and you bit her)
you looked so fierce,
like your wild cousins
that roam the jungles of Asia.
I wish I had jungles to give you.
I wish that could be your life.

Please forgive me.
All I have to offer
is this warm, cozy cage
and my fingers
scratching behind your ears.

--------by Ricky

Sorry Back, from the Hamster

I'm sorry I bit your mom's finger
and hung on to it like that.
Hamsters are not normally
bloodthirsty,
but I'd had a lot of adventures by then
and I was tired.
Her hand was a huge scary claw
coming at me.
The blood tasted like rust.

The truth is, at first
I was so, so happy to be free!!!
But later I was so, so glad
to be back
curled in the warm palm
of you hand.

.------by Ricky (writing for his hamster)

It would be fun to have each student in a class take a different pair of poems, read them over and over, and "learn" about their subject/s. They could then create more writing - prose or poetry, and more art, about what they have added to the picture of these subjects in their minds.