Monday, January 21, 2008

In the Pits of Poetry

Tunnel, Michael O. and James S. Jacobs. Children's Liteature, Briefly. 4e. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2008.

I've never been a big poetry fan. Trying to write something so creative with very little objective criteria for judgement was torture. And I was always so concerned with figuring out how my teachers interpreted poetry (so that I could then interpret it the "right" way). It just about killed any potential for enjoyment.

I liked what they said about sharing poems without any ulterior motive and about focusing on kids' preferences and feelings instead of technical interpretation.

2 comments:

Lacee E. Jones said...

I am with you! I was never a big poetry fan when I was little either!!! It was always about what the teacher wanted instead of writing it for FUN!!

Tamara Clay said...

I agree with you poetry should be fun for children. As a child I struggled with the meaning of poetry.