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Dear Book Lovers, Welcome! I am delighted that you have found The Through the Looking Glass blog. For over twenty years I reviewed children's literature titles for my online journal, which came out six times a year. Every book review written for that publication can be found on the Through the Looking Glass website (the link is below). I am now moving in a different direction, though the columns that I write are still book-centric. Instead of writing reviews, I'm offering you columns on topics that have been inspired by wonderful books that I have read. I tell you about the books in question, and describe how they have have impacted me. This may sound peculiar to some of you, but the books that I tend to choose are ones that resonate with me on some level. Therefore, when I read the last page and close the covers, I am not quite the same person that I was when first I started reading the book. The shift in my perspective might be miniscule, but it is still there. The books I am looking are both about adult and children's titles. Some of the children's titles will appeal to adults, while others will not. Some of the adult titles will appeal to younger readers, particularly those who are eager to expand their horizons.

Friday, September 11, 2015

Poetry Friday with a review of Poems in the Attic

When I was a child my Aunt D used to tell me stories about the childhood that she and my father shared in India. I love those stories because they helped me better understand who my father was and why he grew up to become such a thoughtful, bookish man who was fascinated by people.

In today's poetry title you will meet a little girl who gets to know her mother better by reading a collection of poems that her mother wrote when she was a child. The litter girl finds out about the adventures that her mother, had and about the challenges that she faced. The free verse and Japanese tanka poems that cover the pages in this book give readers the opportunity to shift between the child of the present and the child of the past.

Poems in the AtticPoems in the Attic
Nikki Grimes
Illustrations by Elizabeth Zunon
Poetry Picture Book
For ages
Lee and Low, 2015, 978-1-62014-027-7
One day a seven-year-old girl goes into the attic in her grandmother’s house to explore. She finds a cedar box full of poems that her mother wrote when she was seven years old. As the daughter of a military man, Mama moved around a lot, and she had many memorable experiences. Now her daughter can read about these experiences in her mother’s poems.
   She reads about how her mama, when she lived in California, went to the beach with her father to see the Grunion Run. Together Mama and her father saw “slim fish, silver as new dimes” wriggling onto the beach where they laid their eggs.
   She reads about how Mama and Grandma made paper bag luminaries when they lived in Mexico, and how they used the bags, with their “scalloped” tops and happy painted faces, to decorate the path leading up to their adobe home. Grandma even teaches the little girl the “kind of magic she and Mama used to make / every December, in New Mexico.” Through their craft activity they have a wonderful time together connecting with the past.
   Looking through a photo album the little girl see a picture of her mother with a snowman “that stands taller than she.” The child also reads her mother’s poem, in which Mama describes how she used the skies her father gave her to shuffle around her back yard in the snow. In her dreams she was “flying downhill.”
   Often Mama’s father was away from the family for months, and when they lived in Colorado Mama had to bring a photo of her father to school for Bring Your Dad Day because he was away. The little girl is sure that Mama must have missed her father very much during those long separations.
   When she reads her mother’s poem describing how she and her family members went canoeing when they lived in Virginia, the little girl understands why her mother has so many pictures of kayaks and canoes on their walls at home.  
   In this remarkable book every spread gives readers a free verse poem that captures the little girl’s feelings as she gets to know her mother through her poems. On the facing page readers will find her mother’s poems. The mother’s poems are written in the Japanese tanka format, which use five lines. There are five syllables in the first and third lines, and seven syllables in the second, fourth, and fifth lines.
   It is fascinating to see how Nikki Grimes uses poems to tell a story that is powerful and poignant, and that celebrates the connection that a child shares with her mother; a connection that reaches back into the past.

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