(Cross Post from my own Goodreads Review of FOREST HAS A SONG)
"I'm here./Come visit./Please?"
I get excited when someone out there who gives so much to the poetry community by way of celebrating the works of others releases a first work of their very own. Well-known already in the social media circles with her presence in on-line discussions and forums and via her own blog, Amy Ludwig VanDerwater is someone to befriend and follow now. . .
. . .because, in time, she is going to be huge. If FOREST HAS A SONG is any indication of what we might be able to draw from Amy by way of verse, she is well-poised to join the ranks of cherished children's poets such as Myra Cohn Livingston, Rebecca Kai Dotlich, Betsy Franco, Joyce Sidman, Laura Purdie Salas, and Marilyn Singer. In fact, it brings me a certain amount of delight to slip Amy's new book onto the shelf with the others mentioned here.
If "Forest" does, indeed have a song, it is gentle lullaby composed for the many voices that would come from within the foliage. And Amy captures many of them within the collection. Beginning with "Invitation," Amy welcomes readers into the focus of the book by employing the senses (and what a beautiful way to welcome new readers of poetry into the genre as well as into the book).
In the following poems, italicized font represents the voice of the forest responding with its gentle voice to the presence of a small girl who has come into the forest. Like a child might do, this little girl picks up a wet stick and begins to break it apart:
Spongy springy stick
I pick it into tiny bits.
Sliver sail the wind.
I don't want to disrupt the natural feel of this wonderful book by mentioning the new standards coming out for teachers and students, but looking at this sample piece of Amy's verse, we can see into the simplicity of the genre while taking a closer look at how we might introduce alliteration, assonance, internal rhyme. And while Amy may not follow the rigidity of haiku (see what I did there), here is a mentor text in how the style may provide the frame for creative writing.
Amy likens the tracks of the forest creatures as a text we might be able to "read" upon entering the forest in her piece, "Forest News." The poem ends:
Scribbled hints
in footprints
tell about the day.
I stop to read
the Forest News
before it's worn away.
Amy, via her sojourner, moves deeper into the forest to find: fiddleheads (who sing "greenest greetings"),fossils ("forever dead calm"), lichens ("messages in cursive code")and lady's slipper (with masterful allusions to the familiar character of Cinderella). With these entities, I see an opportunity to employ Amy's book within a unit on field flowers or the ecology of a forest.
As Amy's collection moves through the seasons, the reader experiences some of the changes--and some of the visitors who come and go--that occur over the course of the year. That the book moves through these seasons would make FOREST HAS A SONG a wonderful ladder to the D. B. Johnson series of Henry books that would introduce younger readers to the classic work, WALDEN.
Robbin Gourley's water color illustrations and the colorful, leafy end papers round out a beautiful, beautiful little book that should be in classroom libraries every where. Just in time for National Poetry Month, this is one you would love to have on a desk during a poetry flood for that reader looking for gentle verse with a nature theme.
There is so much to celebrate within this collection. I wanted to come out early in support as well as praise of this collection. Reading through it a tenth time, I am reminded that Amy's gentle spirit throughout this book is best found in her not telegraphing her unique play on words or her ability to render thoughtful verse, but it is found within Amy's continual and consistent pointing back to the forest she has invited us to consider and she has invited us to come in to take a look.
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