Once Around the SunThese poems are autobiographical. I spun them from deeply imbedded, but clear, memories of my own experiences and feelings from when I was an elementary school child. And even now, so many years after I've been out of school, and even college, the year seems to start in "when yellow pencils / in brand-new eraser hats / bravely wait on perfect points."
My year in poems, one for each month it takes Earth to circle our star, the sun. LeUyen Pham illustrated my poems with a gorgeous interplay of changing sunlight and starlight as a background for a boy, his family, and his friends. Each month has its own speical images for each person. I hope this collection will help every reader or listener to recall his or her own memories of a particular month. And maybe those memories will become poems, too.
June June is when your math book is completely lopsided: the pile of unfinished pages on the right is skinny but you need to use your left hand to hold down all the stuff you've already learned. And June is when the gentlest rustle of a leaf outside the window can drown out your teacher's voice and every word on the spelling test spells: S-U-M-M-E-R V-A-C-A-T-I-O-N! From Once Around the Sun by Bobbi Katz and illustrated by LeUyen Pham, coming from Harcourt 2006. All rights reserved. |
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