NCTE Award Winner - Valerie Worth

Worth, V.  (1994).  “All the small poems and fourteen others.  Ill. N. Babbitt.  New York, NY:  Farrar, Straus and Giroux.  ISBN: 9780374403454

The National Council of Teachers of English selects a poet every three years to receive their Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children which honors a living poet’s lifetime achievement  in poetry for children ages 3 through 13.  In 1991, Valerie Worth was the recipient of this prestigious award.

Her volume of poetry titled “all the small poems and fourteen more” is 194 pages of one-page poems about topics ranging from frogs to Christmas lights, from doors to garbage, from frost to potatoes.  This volume encompasses 99 poems that were previously published as four separate volumes, plus 14 additional poems.  Each poem is spare, yet full of imagery that will tickle all five senses such as this one: 

            garbage

            The stained,

            Sour-scented

            Bucket tips out

            Hammered-gold

            Orange rind,

            Eggshell ivory,

            Garnet coffee-

            Grounds, pearl

            Wand of bared

            Chicken bone:

            Worked back soon

            To still more

            Curious jewelry

            Of chemical

            And molecule.

Critics label this book of poetry as being appropriate for children ages four through nine.  However, I tried several of the poems – including “garbage” – on my six-year-old, and he had trouble staying engaged.  Many of the images were not ones that he had experience with, so they didn’t make sense to him.  There were a few that caught his attention, but we had to set this volume aside. 

However, I personally love these poems, so I think that using them with older students would be quite appropriate.  Figures of speech abound in these little treasures – personification, similes, metaphors, onomatopoeia, and sensory images are generously used, but never overwhelm the poems.  These poems would be perfect for teaching older students about figures of speech and using language precisely and sparingly to evoke vivid pictures and sounds, smells, tastes, and feelings. 

Read a poem such as “fireworks” to the class, even asking them to close their eyes and imagine being in this place as they hear the words. 

           

            fireworks

            First

            A far thud,

            Then the rocket

            Climbs the air,

            A dull red flare,

            To hang, a moment,

            Invisible, before

            Its shut black shell cracks

            And claps against the ears,

            Breaks and billows into bloom,

            Spilling down clear green sparks, gold spears,

            Silent sliding silver waterfalls and stars.

Or read this poem full of tastes and ask the students to imagine the flavors on their tongues:

            sweets

            Here

            Is a list

            Of likely

            Words

            To taste:

            Peppermint,

            Cinnamon,

            Strawberry,

            Licorice,

            Lime:

            Strange

            How they manage

            To flavor

            The paper

            Page.

Then try mimicking the poem by writing one with smells or sounds or unusual colors.

Natalie Babbitt, known for her children’s novel Tuck Everlasting, illustrated each poem with beautiful, realistic, pen and ink drawings that perfectly capture the words of the poems while still being simple, just like the poems themselves. I love the art so much, that I love the book for the art as much as the poetry.

These small poems are perfect for novice readers of poems or those who have been scared off poems by over-zealous English teachers who have made poetry about analyzing rather than enjoying.  The topics of the poems that come from daily life will feel comfortable and familiar to most readers.