BOOKSPEAK! - Laura Purdie Salas

1. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Salas, Laura Purdie. 2011. BookSpeak! Poems About Books. Ill. by Josée Bisaillon. Boston, MA: Clarion Books. ISBN: 978-0-547-22300-1

2. PLOT SUMMARY
The first poem of BookSpeak! invites the reader to choose the adventure of reading over television or the computer. Most of the poems are personifications, written from the point of view of books, diaries, and different parts of the book, like covers and bookplates. The index even explains why it is more helpful than the table of contents. There is sibling rivalry between the beginning, the middle, and the ending. Find out about book care and the process of writing a book. Do you know what happens when everyone leaves the bookstore at night? These humorous poems will introduce the reader to the world of books from the inside out.

3. CRITICAL ANALYSIS
BookSpeak! offers a variety of different styles of poems, from opening with an invitation to read through the last poem, appropriately titled “The End.” Despite “Index” touting its usefulness, there is not one in this book. Composed to honor paper-bound books, these poems will engage readers as long as print meets page. The poems are playful and entice the reader into adventure. Concepts and vocabulary should be understandable to most elementary-aged students (second or third grade and up).

Most poems in the collection have a strong meter and predictable rhyme scheme like “Calling All Readers” (abab) or “Vacation Time!” (aabb). Some are imperfect rhymes (like tattoo and show in “Book Plate” or been and twin in “A Character Pleads for His Life”). In these cases, trying to force a true rhyme would have been less effective. “Top Secret” is an acrostic. “On the Shelf and Under the Bed” is free verse. In addition to rhymes, Salas includes alliteration and assonance in poems like “A Character Pleads for His Life” (“Surfer dude, scientist, sea turtle, twin” where S transitions to T), “Picture This” (“belle of the ball”), or “The End,” which has both alliteration and assonance (“sprint, skip, skim” and “smile, cry, sigh”).

Salas offers a number of unique images in her poems. The end of a book is compared to the finish line of a race, book plates to tattoos. Illustrators make “words bloom in your heart” (“This Is The Book”). There is a repeated image of stories being trapped in the books unless someone opens them to let them out. In “A Character Pleads for His Life,” the reader is invited to join the character in the freedom of the story. Because books are personified, they twist common phrases to fit their format, like “bite your page” instead of “bite your tongue” in “The Middle’s Lament: A Poem for Three Voices”

Visual elements are an important component in BookSpeak! The typesetting supports poems like “Cliffhanger.” Layout also adds to the repetitive form in “This Is the Book.” Some verses are set apart from the overall pattern of stanzas to highlight their meaning. Fonts are carefully selected to add interest to the poems while maintaining readability. The poem about a diary uses a handwriting-style font. The font used for the title of “Conflicted” is tangled. Josée Bisaillon’s mixed-media illustrations are carefully crafted to complement each poem. A portion of an index is used on the page for “Index”. The text used in the water for “Cliffhanger” has a washed-out appearance. Combining original illustration with collages of paper, books, and photos, Bisaillon adds visual art to the poetic.

4. REVIEW EXCERPT(S) AND AWARDS

Bank Street College of Education, Best Children's Books of the Year, 2012

NCTE Children’s Literature Assembly, Notable Children’s Books in the Language Arts, 2012

Gelett Burgess Center for Creative Expression Honor Book, 2011

White Ravens book, 2012

Nerdy Book Award, 2011

H. W. Wilson’s Children’s Core Collection – Core level recommendation

School Library Journal: “The poems are, by turns, philosophical, humorous, and even instructional . . .  Whimsical, mixed-media illustrations grace every page. Bisaillon skillfully incorporates the printed poems into the artwork so that the words and images have a single, unified, visual effect. This is an appealing offering that will be especially popular with librarians.”

BookList: “With its mix of poetic forms and wry twists on language-arts terms, this is a natural choice for sharing in classrooms and young writers’ workshops” (no final period on online version)

Children's Literature: “a spirited and lovely celebration of reading and its joys”

Amazon: “A collection of wacky, whimsical poems about books and all the treasures they contain…”

5. CONNECTIONS

-          Use in library lessons teaching the parts of a book, selecting poems relevant to the lesson. The poems can also be introduced with the song “A Book Has Two Covers” (see http://www.mommynature.com/documents/concepts-print-song.pdf for the tune and lyrics).

-          Write poems for topics not covered by Salas: for example, title page, spine, dust jacket, ISBN number, library barcode, or bookmarks. Use withdrawn library books for collage elements to add to digital clipart and children’s drawings to mimic Bisaillon’s illustrations.

-          Pair with nonfiction books about writing and publishing books.

Aliki. How a Book Is Made. ISBN 0-690-04498-4

Bial, Raymond. A Book Comes Together: From Idea to Library. ISBN 0-9718238-0-4

Christelow, Eileen. What Do Authors Do? ISBN 0-395-71124-X

Christelow, Eileen. What Do Illustrators Do? ISBN 978-0-618-87423-1

Fox, Kathleen. A Book Is Just Like You. ISBN 978-1-60213-060-9

Donovan, Sandy. Karl and Carolina Uncover the Parts of a Book. ISBN 978-1-40485760-5

Donovan, Sandy. Pingpong Perry Experiences How a Book Is Made. ISBN 978-1-40486106-0

Hayward, Linda. I Am a Book. ISBN 0-7613-2905-6

Marshall, Pam. From Idea to Book. ISBN 0-8225-1385-4

Royston, Angela. How Is a Book Made? ISBN 978-1-40346639-6

Rhatigan, Joe. In Print! 40 Cool Publishing Projects for Kids. ISBN 1-57990-359-2

-          Compare this collection of poems with I Am the Book, compiled by Lee Bennett Hopkins (ISBN 978-0-8234-2119-0).