Poetry Friday: Kristine O’Connell George

I’m getting ready to dive into teaching poetry again, and so I’ve been revisiting resources that I’ve used successfully and tinkered with before. Kristine O’Connell George’s website is a gift to teachers. Here’s why:

1. The Poetry Aloud section offers audio clips of many of Kristine’s poems from most of her books. Get the kids to listen in order to learn a bit about how to recite a poem effectively. Then they can podcast their own poetry!

2. There are oodles of amazing ideas for using Swimming Upstream (Kristine’s poetry collection on Middle School life) in the classroom. How about reading some of the student-written poems inspired by the poems in this collection? Check out the Teacher Guide and Discussion Guide for even more to do.

3. Speaking of Teacher Guides and Discussion Guides, Kristine has downloadable Educator Guides for all of her books, packed with ideas that are practical and fun. (Feeling spoiled yet?)

You can read a few of the poems from Swimming Upstream: Middle School Poems here. I like Sunday Night Meltdown. And Fold Me a Poem? To borrow a phrase from my students, “This book rocks.” Wrap it up with a few packages of snazzy origami paper. Slap a bow on it. Instant birthday present perfection for the poetically inclined.

ATTENTION BOY BOOK REVIEWERS!!!

Attention boy book reviewers / readers / bloggers / book industry types (OK, and you girls listen up too)!

For those of you who are not “in the know,” there is an awesome bloggy idea hatching as we speak, and it shall be called: GuysLitWire. Colleen Mondor, of Chasing Ray fame, came up with this master plan to create a marvelous site devoted to book recommendations for teenage boys. The site will be produced by the collective brain power of many bloggers and friends and it will consist of all manner of glorious things: interviews, playlists, reviews, rants, lists, meant to encourage, inspire and entertain teen guys. If all unfolds according to plan, the site will “go live” by June.

At the moment, what is needed is more men. We need men! Men to read. Men to review. Men to write posts and do interviews. Men.

So, if you feel like being a GuysLitWire guy, Colleen would love to hear from you (colleenatchasingraydotcom). Who wouldn’t want to hang out with all kinds of brainy book girls from every corner of the kidlitosphere? (And girls… I bet she wouldn’t mind hearing from you either. So join in!)