Free Choice

Free Choice

Bibliography

Wolf, Allan and Raff, Anna.  2019. The Day the Universe Exploded My Head: Poems to Take You into Space and Back Again.  Somerville, Massachusetts: Candlewick Press. ISBN 978-0763680251.  

Summary/Analysis

This poetry collection by Allan Wolf focuses on stars, planets, moons, and other things found in outer space.  The 28 poems contain facts about different topics (Mercury is first planet, no atmosphere, etc.) and they are presented in a light and funny way.  The accompanying illustrations reinforce the topic and add a playful and silly feel to each poem.  Most poems have some sort of rhyme and there are several poems meant to be performed by multiple people (Shooting Stars has three roles).  The collection includes notes about each poem with some notes as brief as one sentence and others as long as a paragraph.  There is also a glossary of space terms, a list of resources, and information on each space topic found in the back of the book.

Use

The Sun Did Not Go Down Today

No matter what the poets say,

the sun did not go down today!

The sun did not go down today!

It only just appeared that way.

I’ll tell you what real facts is:

the Earth is turning on an axis!

The Earth turns on its axis

like a dizzy, spinning, tilted top.

Each year, three hundred sixty five

complete rotations without stop.

And as it spins, we all stand firm

and ride it round with every turn.

The sun remains there in the sky

and waves at use as we go by

on our spherical, miracle merry-go-round.

So next time you notice the sun “going down,”

watch in awe, but don’t forget:

The sun stays put, it’s you who’s set.

This poem is a good example of the simple rhyming poems found in the book.  It provides factual information on the sun and gives students good vocabulary like “axis” and compares it to a top.  The illustrations by Bryan even show the Earth spinning like a top.  This poem would be best introduced during a science unit discussing season, how the Earth rotates, and/or the sun.  After reading this poem out loud students could take turns coming up and creating different motions for each line of information or for specific parts (“all stand firm”, “dizzy spinning top”).  Students could take turns acting it out with one student pretending to be the sun and the other pretending to be the Earth.