NCTE Award Poetry

NCTE Award Poetry

Bibliography

Grimes, Nikki. Poems in the Attic. 2015. New York: Lee & Low Books Inc. ISBN 978-1518108631.

Summary/Analysis

Poems in the Attic is a collection of 35 poems by NCTE Award winning poet Nikki Grimes.  The poems come together to tell a story about a little girl who finds a box of her mother’s poems about her travels as an Air Force kid.  Poems in free verse (typically first on the page) are by the little girl and poems written by the mother are written in Tanka (Grimes mentions that she uses the specific pattern: 5,7,5,7,7).  The illustrations by Elizabeth Zunon offer a deeper insight to the poems location like in the poem Aurora Borealis Zunon beautifully depicts the “dancing rainbow” that is mentioned in the poem.  The illustrations also offer a helpful guide in the story.  The girl’s poems are above an illustration bordered in an oval while the mother’s poems are a full page spread.  Towards the end of the book the poems come together as the girl sees her mother again and gifts her poems of her own.  The poems all flow together with ease and the imagery used in the poems are brought to life with the illustrations. There is no table of contents or index present, but there is an Author’s Note and a list of the United States Air Force Bases that were used in the book (each base has the name of the poem listed).  The very last pages Grimes informs readers on the poetic forms that she used and invites the reader to create their own.

Use

Aurora Borealis

My brother and me

held hands, breathless, as we watched

this dancing rainbow

shimmy ‘cross Alaska’s sky

in a skirt of night and light.

This poem in tanka form really captures Grimes’ use of imagery with “dancing rainbow” and “skirt of night and light.”  The illustrations also help complete the full image for the reader.  I would read the poem several times and then ready Grimes’ information on Tanka poems.  After reading about tanka poems and talking about how they focus on mood and are “about love, the four seasons, the shortness of life, or nature” I would have students pick a theme and write their own tanka poem using the same 5,7,5,7,7 syllable format that Grimes used in her book.  Possible extension could be tied to social studies lesson and focus on Japan and Tanka poetry or on the different places that the mother visited in the book.