LS 5663 Spring 2012: Poetry Performance

Module 5:  Hopkins Award Poetry


Bibliographic information:

Schertle, Alice, and Petra Mathers. Button up!: wrinkled rhymes. New York: Harcourt Children's Books/ Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009. ISBN: 9780152050504

Review:

The national Lee Bennett Hopkins Award for Children’s Poetry is awarded yearly to an anthology of poetry or a single poem published for children by a living American poet or anthologist. The Hopkins Award is administered by The Pennsylvania Center for the Book and Penn State University Libraries.

The 2010 Hopkins Award winner, Button Up! Wrinkled Rhymes by Alice Schertle provides many examples of alliteration, onomatopoeia, personification and repetition. However, the collection’s real appeal is that it is written from the perspective of familiar inanimate objects such as hats, underwear and other clothing. These fifteen clever poems will stimulate readers’ imaginations as they explore the unknown world of items to which they can relate. Every poem is created with quality language and style by one award winning poet especially for this collection.

Readers may enjoy the personalities and moods of these common articles of clothing and may be inspired to look at everyday events from their perspectives. Using the table of contents readers can easily find a specific poem although there is no index. Each two page layout features a poem and an original watercolor illustration by Petra Mathers.

The Hopkins Award website states that the 2010 judges said that Button Up! is full of humor and will “draw children in with laughter and love”. The animated poems in Button Up! encourage expressive and dramatic reading that will urge even the most reluctant readers to read with enthusiasm.



Highlighted Poem:
p. 4

Bertie’s Shoelaces

Good old Bertie,

he lets us hang around.

It doesn’t bother Bertie

when we drag along the ground.

We’re not uptight

as our Bertie Buddy knows.

We’re hang loose laces and

we don’t do bows!

Introduction/Activity:

4th grade: personification

After reviewing the definition of personification, read Button Up, Wrinkled Rhymes. Re-read Bertie’s Shoelaces and have students identify phrases in the poem that demonstrate the use of personification. Have students create original poems using personification about school, home or a vacation written from their backpacks’ point of view.