As the poems evolve, it becomes clear that something is troubling this kid. Here's a piece of his first poem about the day, for example:īut little by little he begins to write more, although at first he writes simply to complain about things like William Carlos Williams' famous red wheelbarrow poem. Little by little, he puts his observations into words. He sets out to explore the day world, for example, and he gets a creative crush on the vain yet talented mockingbird. That description sounds like pop psychology, I'm afraid, but all of these ideas are couched in a nice little plot about a bat who's not like the others. The small bat wants to know things, and then he wants to sing, and when that doesn't work, he begins to make up poems, trying to give shape to the yearning he has inside, a powerful need for self-expression. The little brown bat at the heart of poet Randall Jarrell's tale is just so eager and sweet and shy and curious, yet manages all this, like a real human child, without being overly sentimental. The Bat-Poet, written by Randall Jarrell and illustrated by Maurice Sendak (1964)Ĭharacter is king, and especially in this book. Here, then, are two classics about writing poetry, plus two new books on the same theme. Almost as good as fire and refrigeration, in fact. Not that kids should necessarily become professional writers later in life, but that writing is a tool for being human. I'm biased, naturally, but I will point out that what these books have to say about writing is important.
I mean, isn't there something self-indulgent about that? Perhaps even more so when it comes to poetry, a form often dismissed as being too airy-fairy for real life, real people. This isn't surprising: Don't they say, "Write what you know"? Yet I wonder if there's room in the world of children's books for books about writing. I remember reading somewhere that at least one parent in a lot of children's books is often a writer, or that the young main character is often an aspiring writer. When she returned it, she said, "It's about what it's like to be a poet." I was sort of surprised-I thought it was just a good story. Once, years ago, I loaned a friend Randall Jarrell's book The Bat-Poet.
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