Poetry Friday and Celebrating

I'm doing a happy dance this week. My new book with Libraries Unlimited arrived.

Actually it arrived two days before Christmas, but life had to slow down long enough for me to enjoy the happy dance. It was fun sharing with my children and giving the first copy to my fourth-grade grandson. I'm only just now slowed and steady enough to share it with you.

The book contains 20 scripts and 10 monologues and covers 45 explorers throughout history. It was a lot of fun and and a lot of work. I'm thrilled to hold it in my hands. I hope to schedule a virtual book tour sometime in February. I'd love to stop in at your blog and talk about my book. Let me know if you're interested.

So for good reason, I'm back to explorer poems. There's plenty more Poetry Friday to be enjoyed at my good friend Irene Latham's blog, Live. Love. Explore! What a great place for today's post to land!

Of the many books I read a lot of books on explorers, some stand out more than others.

I, Matthew Henson: Polar Explorer by Author: Carole Boston Weatherford is a favorite. I love her use of preterition. Saying what she's not talking about to draw attention to that very thing. Beautiful illustrations by Eric Velasquez bring Henson's struggles and the journey to life.

Here is the beginning:

I did not walk forty miles

from the nation’s capital

to Baltimore’s busy harbor to eye

ships from a dock. Though just thirteen

I yearned for a taste of the adventures

that I had heard old sailors speak of,

to explore the seven seas

and somehow find my calling.

I did not start as a cabin boy, climb

the ranks to able-bodied seaman,

sail five continents, and learn

trades and foreign tongues to be shunned

by white crews who thought blacks

were not seaworthy. I did not chart

this course to drift in humdrum jobs

ashore. My dreams had sails.

I hope you are holding to your New Year's goals. May all your dreams have sails.

I Conquered the North Pole

No fingers or toes lost to frostbite. My ears and nose are still intact. I've eaten no pemmican, suffered no scurvy.

I finally managed to write my script on the Peary/Cook controversy. I really enjoy research, sometimes too much. This was one of those times. I got caught up in the details of the story so much I lost perspective. I got emotionally involved. I didn't like the ruthless, egocentric Peary I found in the pages of his biographies. I didn't want to believe Matthew Cook was truly a con man. But facts are facts. So many facts. I couldn't figure out how to condense this story to a scene.

Right. One scene.

It's a little like writing a 30-second trailer for a 90-minute film, without leaving out the climax and the conclusion.

That's the heart of readers theater. Or readers' theater. Or reader's theater. Or any of those choices, plus the British spelling, theatre. Take your pick. It makes trying to find information on the internet absolutely maddening!

Anyway, I'm closing in on completion of this project. I'm already feeling my thoughts wandering toward the next one, which is actually the last project I put on hold in order to write this one. I'd like to think this mind flitting is like a hummingbird, moving delicately between hibiscus nectar to sweet clematis. Unfortunately it feels more like the Keystone Cops blundering from one half-open door to the next until the culprit of a thought disappears into thin air. I know lots of writers who work on multiple projects at the same time, but I haven't figured out how to do it very well myself.

I'm trying to stay focused.

First Reading

I had a delightful visit with students at Hannan Elementary School yesterday. With students and teachers ready for a break from testing, I had four attentive audiences. Well, except for when the loud speaker called for the second graders to come get their snow cones in the middle of their author visit. We whizzed very quickly through the rest of the book we were reading together. After all, it takes something pretty special to compete with snow cones!

The fourth grade classes agreed to try out my script on Columbus, Vespucci, and Waldsemuller from the reader's theater book. They were such great sports about it. Eight students agreed to read the parts in front of the group, even though they had never seen it before. They did a great job. And it was a good evaluation for me to see a first reading.