PET CRAZY: A Poetry Friday Power Book

Calling all “pet people”! PET CRAZY: A Poetry Friday Power Book features twelve PowerPacks that use creative activities to get your children (K-3) thinking, drawing, reading, and writing about cats, dogs, lizards, rabbits, and more! Resources for children (as well as parents, teachers, and book club leaders) include “Hidden Language Skills” to sharpen language learning even further, recommended reading lists and websites, tips for reading aloud and writing, talking points, and places to publish.

The book features the work of the dynamic team of Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong, illustrator Franzi Paetzold, and 12 poets: Kristy Dempsey, Helen Frost, Janice Harrington, Eric Ode, Laura Shovan, Eileen Spinelli, Elizabeth Steinglass, Don Tate, Padma Venkatraman, April Halprin Wayland, Carole Boston Weatherford, and Tamera Will Wissinger.

Sylvia M. Vardell is Professor at Texas Woman’s University and teaches courses in children's and young adult literature. She has published five books on literature, as well as over 25 book chapters and 100 journal articles. Her current work focuses on poetry for young people, including a regular blog, PoetryforChildren.blogspot.com, since 2006. Her favorite pets are dogs and she’s had three of them (Luther, Yenta, and Caesar, each for many years), as well as Leonardo the tortoise, and Pecky, the parakeet.

Janet Wong is a graduate of Yale Law School and a former lawyer who became a children’s poet. Her work has been featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show and other shows. She is the winner of the 2021 NCTE Excellence in Poetry for Children Award and the author of 35 books for children and teens on chess, creative recycling, yoga, superstitions, driving, and more. She has had dozens of pets, including birds, fish, a frog, hamsters, lizards, turtles, a cat, and favorite dogs named Bernadette, Coco, Nissa, and Angel.

Together, Vardell and Wong are the creative forces behind The Poetry Friday Anthology series and the Poetry Friday Power Book series. You can learn more about their books at PomeloBooks.com.

Books by Vardell and Wong have won numerous awards and accolades, including the ILA Notable Books for a Global Society (NBGS), NCTE Poetry Notables, Children's Poet Laureate Pick of the Month, CBC Hot Off the Press, and NSTA Recommends.