Dirty Laundry Pile: Poems in Different Voices - Hardcover

Janeczko, Paul B.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0688162517 ISBN 13: 9780688162511

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2001

Synopsis

Pssst...reader!

I've got something to tell you.

I'm not just another book of poetry.

I'm full of voices you've never heard before.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be a turtle, a snowflake, or a pile of dirty laundry?

All sorts of objects and animals speak up in these poems that are just shouting to be read.

So what are you waiting for? Check me out!

About this title

About the Authors

Paul B. Janeczko speaks as an editor, anthologist, poet, and teacher in his many award-winning books for young readers. Dirty Laundry Pile: Poems in Different Voices, a companion to Hey, You!, was named a Riverbank Review Children's Book of Distinction and was a finalist for the Texas Bluebonnet Award. Paul B. Janeczko lives with his wife and daughter in Hebron, Maine.

Melissa Sweet has illustrated more than one hundred books, including Kwame Alexander’s How to Read a Book and How to Write a Poem, and has written and illustrated her own work. Her work has been featured in magazines, on greeting cards, and on living room walls. Melissa has received the Caldecott Honor Medal twice, among many other awards, including the Sibert Award, and is a New York Times bestselling author and artist. Melissa lives in Maine. You can visit her at melissasweet.net.

From the Back Cover

Pssst...reader!

I've got something to tell you.

I'm not just another book of poetry.

I'm full of voices you've never heard before.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be a turtle, a snowflake, or a pile of dirty laundry?

All sorts of objects and animals speak up in these poems that are just shouting to be read.

So what are you waiting for? Check me out!

Reviews

Grade 3-6-Janeczko's collection of "persona" or "mask" poems-poems written in voices of nonhuman things-is varied in topic, mood, and quality. The selector has included many crackerjack poets, such as Karla Kuskin, Bobbi Katz, Lillian Moore, and Douglas Florian, and a few whose names are not as familiar. Most of the selections have been taken from other anthologies. Whether thoughtful or humorous in nature, many of them are on-target descriptions of a variety of unrelated objects-a kite, roots, a sky-blue crayon, a vacuum cleaner, a pair of red gloves, the winter wind. The cleverness of the best of these descriptions voiced by inanimate narrators might entice young people to try to create some similar verses of their own. Sweet's bright, colorful watercolors in a flat cartoon style depict full- and double-page scenes and borders that feature critters and objects from the poems. Consider this one for classroom read-alouds.
Susan Scheps, Shaker Heights Public Library, OH
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

These well-chosen verses represent what Janeczko (Very Best [Almost] Friends) calls "persona or mask poems" each written in the voice of an object or animal. Bobbi Katz's washing machine sings its washing songs "Blub-blub-a-dubba" while Patricia Hubbell's vacuum cleaner complains, "I swallow twigs./ I slurp dead bugs," and finally threatens, "I think I'll swallow you today!" Informally organized around various topics, the volume begins with poems about wind and weather and ends with works about insects and animals. For the most part, the poems, including selections by Douglas Florian, Jane Yolen and Karla Kuskin, are effectively matched by Sweet's (Bat Jamboree) playful and cartoony watercolors. The light mood of the illustrations, however, jars with slightly darker poems. In Nina Nyhart's "Scarecrow Dreams," for example, five crows perch on a wary scarecrow's shoulder as he describes convincing the farmer to put away his gun and then feels "a step on my shoulder,/ the first peck in my eye." Nonetheless, this collection contains well-crafted poetry that surprises with its deft wordplay and original points of view. All ages. (June)
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Gr. 3-6. As Janeczko explains in his introduction, this collection of 27 poems is "something like wearing a Halloween costume or playing a part in a school play," because the poems have all been written in the voice of an object or an animal--a seashell, a cat, a tree. The imaginative language is simple yet rich in image and metaphor. Madeleine Comora's "Roots" speaks volumes: "Roots like ours, course and strong / as a grandmother's fingers." Sometimes the poetry sparkles, sweeps us along, or makes us laugh, as in the title poem about dirty clothes by Marcy Barack Black: "Ignore me now / on the floor / By the door. / But you'll notice / when I swell / By my smell." There's great variety in poetic mood and form--brisk couplets, thoughtful haiku, funny concrete poems. In Peggy B. Levitt's "Mosquito's Song" the word puncture is spelled out vertically, letter by letter, ending, appropriately, in an exclamation point. Melissa Sweet's watercolors are light and airy, but never too slight. Some are full-page, some thumbnail size; and all are hugely appealing, whether dancing comically across the page or bordering the text. They'll draw children into words that resonate with joy and, sometimes, deeper meaning, words that will remind them that there's more than one way to experience the world. Stephanie Zvirin
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0688162517
• ISBN 13: 9780688162511
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Sweet Melissa
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 40