My book seems to be climbing the charts! Number 12 out of nearly 44,000.
As promised, here is the poem for my first book. It’s available on IBooks and amazon. Just type in squidge and look for the little elf on the front cover.
I also included the first paragraph so it all makes sense.
There once was a time, long, long ago,
When toys were simple, and making them slow,
The elves would carve and chop and sew,
But that was a long, long, long, time ago.
And now, every year, as we get the first snow,
Santa opens his letters, but he does not know
What the children have asked for. He says: ‘Ho, ho, ho!
‘Such new fangled things, with screens all aglow!’
And so our story starts: ready, steady …
‘Go and fetch me the laptop!’ shouted an elf. Santa’s workshop had changed a lot. So much so that Santa was still trying to catch up with all these new-fangled hoojamaflips and wotsits. The workshop was still run by the elves,
but instead of toy soldiers and dolls, children now wanted all manner of things. Santa had tried to get most of the stuff made abroad and delivered to his workshop (like MP3 players, Plasma TVs and handheld games consoles) but
he still had lots of things that he made right there in Lapland. Santa still remembered the days when his workshop was full of elves hammering and sewing, but now they all worked on big machines and it looked more like a factory than a tidy little workshop. Santa had moved with the times and updated, but that didn’t mean he had to like it.
So much depends
upon
a small white
envelope
sitting in the post
box
waiting to be
read
Just a little William Carlos Williams.
Here is my attempt to capture the sounds of East London. Mainly used as an example for the kids in my class (year5 – 9 and 10 year olds). They seemed to like it. Inspired by Arnold Adoff.
Street Music
My city:
the always shouting
screaming
noise of the park at night.
The bad boy racers
V r o o m v r o o m v r o o m
Ding
goes the
bell of the nearly run over cyclist.
Shake
rattle
rattle trains
screeching down the track with their
chugga chugga wheels
The low planes in all
V o c a b u l a r i e s
of rumble
whoosh
noise.
My city: the never ending barking of wanna be gangsters dogs and jingle of their leads.
Bark bark bark.
Shhhhhhh.
And finally sleep.
Just another quick note about ‘love that dog’ by Sharon Creech. Just finished marking some of the poems based on street music by Arnold Adoff. It’s amazing the things kids in a inner city school hear and are immune to. Things that would have made me run a mile as a kid. Some amazing poems, full of onomatopoeia and set out in wonderful ways. You can almost hear Deptford while you read them.