Month: November 2025

Poetry Friday: Overheard

OVERHEARD AT NCTE

Begin with gratitude.1
Center joy.2

Place is where stories start.3
You write yourself into existence.4

If you don’t know where you are
you probably don’t know who you are.5

Black poetry is light in darkness

                            hope

                            soul food

                            legacy.6

There is no wrong way to be a writer.7
We can bend the characters–they won’t break.8
Creativity is combinatory.9

Learning should be a collective.10
In relationships and connections we find meaning.11

We learn from reading.12
Characters inspire us and make us brave.13

Reading is the most subversive thing we can do.14

Overhead and Remixed by Mary Lee Hahn, 2025

This post is my contribution to the Poetry Sisters’ challenge to write an “overheard” poem. For my overheard, I used my notes from NCTE, and in the image you can see my away-from-home-no-laptop process. It was fun to go back to the basics/old school. After I drafted in my notebook and did the cut-and-paste recombination, I began my post on my phone and a whole new learning curve emerged: how to format! Thank goodness I can at least bumble in html. 

Edited to add a link to the roundup at Buffy’s blog. Only a couple of the Poetry Sisters managed a post this month, what with NCTE and Life and All. You can find them on the roundup. Edited also to add the sources for each of my quotes.

Happy Thanksgiving, all!

  1. Robin Wall Kimmerer ↩︎
  2. Katie Papesh ↩︎
  3. Mahogany Browne ↩︎
  4. Allan Wolf ↩︎
  5. Ralph Ellison, quoted by Gretchen Schroeder ↩︎
  6. panel with Nikki Grimes and Carol Boston Weatherford ↩︎
  7. Liz Garton Scanlon ↩︎
  8. Scott Snyder ↩︎
  9. Jason Chin ↩︎
  10. Stella Villalba ↩︎
  11. Jason Chin ↩︎
  12. Katie Wood Ray ↩︎
  13. Scott Snyder ↩︎
  14. Percival Everett ↩︎

Poetry Friday: Don’t Obey

After seeing millions of views and shares of his 'Portland Frog' art, Nikkolas Smith decided to draw our Chicken guy and more!
byu/kenistod inPortland

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Today’s poetry challenge came from Susan Thomsen at Chicken Spaghetti. The inspiration and mentor text was Donika Kelly’s  “Poem to Remind Myself of the Natural Order of Things” . Susan’s response to her own challenge is here. This was so much fun! I can’t wait to see what others came up with!

Carol has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup is at The Apples in My Orchard.

Bear and Bird: A Favorite New Series for Transitional Readers

I’ve always been interested in finding the best books for transitional readers—readers who have learned to read and who are becoming more sophisticated readers. They often are new to chapter books, so finding books that support them as readers is important as they build skills and agency as readers.

I discovered the Bear and Bird series by Jarvis this summer. I love so much about this series and one thing I especially like is that the humor in the books appeal to a wide age-range of readers (maybe 3rd graders who are just starting chapter books). 

The first Bear and Bird book I read with a child was “The Stick and Other Stories”. We both laughed aloud on the first page and we were both hooked. The first page made us laugh out loud and fall in love with one of the main characters at the same time.

Since that first book, I’ve enjoyed all of the Bear and Bird books and they have become one of my favorite new series for transitional readers. (I think there are 6 total books in the series now.) The latest book in the series is Bear and Bird: The Secret and Other Stories. 

I love so much about this series. Most of all, while reading these books, I have the same feeling I had when I read Frog and Toad and Henry and Mudge books. Great stories about two friends -stories filled with humor and lessons in friendship. 

These books are part of Candlewick’s “Sparks for New Readers” collection and as I have read these with children, I see the way that these books support transitional readers.

  • Each book has several stories within. The stories may be connected but they stand alone. This is important for readers new to chapter books as they learn to hold onto a story over time.
  • The characters are lovable and predictable. The more you read, the more you come to know the characters and the more you have expectations as readers. Getting to know characters with depth is important for transitional readers and each story allows us to get to know these characters through their relationship with each other.
  • The text and visuals are balanced. The illustrations match the text which I think is an important feature for this stage of reading. The illustrations also include some unique visuals (lists, signs, etc.)
  • The text is accessible to readers while also having features such as dialogue, parentheses and ellipsis that might be new to readers. 
  • The themes in each story are very accessible to young readers and are common themes in friendship stories.

This is a great series for readers who are new to chapter books and who like great characters and a little humor! They make great read alouds for younger readers, too! Try one and if you love it, read the whole series!

Poetry Friday: On the Menu

Linda’s prompt for the Inkings challenge this month comes from Ethical ELA’s September Open Write by Kelsey Bigelow: “What is the happiest thing you’ve ever tasted?”

In brainstorming for the poem, I unearthed a memory of racing to the DQ to get a cone for Dad, and making it home before it melted. Being able to make him happy was sweeter than my own butterscotch dip cone.

Same thing with the good luck dumplings Nai Nai serves before I fly back to Ohio from San Diego. They are so SO yummy, but the best part is her happiness.

Three or four elections ago I brought some Nerds Gummy Clusters to snack on through the long day and to share with my fellow roster judges. This has become a tradition which we were delighted to share with a new member of our team on Tuesday. He had never had them. The look on his face was priceless.

Today I went for a long walk and brainstormed ideas for this poem. I drank in the delicious blue of the sky and savored the crispy crunch under my feet as I walked. Pure Fall happiness! (And that MOON last night!)

Here’s how the rest of the Inklings met this month’s challenge:

Heidi @my juicy little universe
Margaret @Reflections on the Teche
Linda @A Word Edgewise
Catherine @Reading to the Core
Molly @Nix the Comfort Zone

Laura has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at Laura Purdie Salas.