Blogging, Newbery and More

Today, Mary Lee and I attended Cover to Covers Book Award Watch Party. It was like old times. A visit to Cover to Cover with friends, watching the book awards–cheering for the books we loved and jotting down new-to-us titles that we’ll need to read soon.

Mary Lee and I started the blog almost 20 years ago as a way to have a conversation about the Newbery Award. It grew into so much more. And now it is filled with incredible poetry by Mary Lee. It is hard to believe the blog is 20 years old. I miss blogging. I miss the community. Mary Lee, the best blog partner and friend, has been so patient, keeping up with the blog as I’ve had other projects, life, etc. and then inviting me back in. I did some reflection this year (one does that after a big birthday) and thought back to the things and times in life I loved most. And bloggiing, talking books with friends, thinking together with Mary Lee definitely came up as a favorite time and favorite thing. One that I am sorry I gave up for so long. So I am back to blogging. And I am already (2 paragraphs in) happy to be back.

So I’ll be back to writing about children’s books, adult books I am reading, podcasts and things, all that I am learning in my work with teachers and children, and of course, random things.

So, back to the Newbery. I didn’t read as much middle grade as I had hoped in 2024 but was THRILLED to see Erin Entrada Kelly’s book First State of Being -a book I have read and loved-named this year’s winner! I love this author and I loved the book. It is hard to do a science-fiction book for middle grade readers and this one was wonderful. (I love a good time travel story with a bit of history embedded!)

The other books I read and was excited to see win awards today were:

Home in a Lunchbox by Cherry Mo(Caldecodtt Honor)

My Daddy is a Cowboy by Stephanie Seales and C.G. Esperanza (Caldecott Honor)

Magnolia Wu Unfolds It All by Chanel Miller (Newbery Honor)

Carole Boston Weatherford (Legacy Award)

Coretta by Coretta Scott King and Ekua Holmes (Coretta Scott King Honor)

Louder than Hunger by John Schu (Schneider Honor)

Joyful Song by Lesléa Newman(Sydney Taylor Honor)

Shark Teeth by Sherri Winston (Schneider Honor)

And I added so many to my list of to-reads!! Such a good year for books!

Poetry Friday: Fire

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I’ve adopted Molly’s strategy of using Wordle guesses as writing prompts. Thursday’s final word sparked deeper thinking about fire. The images from Los Angeles are haunting as are the stories of the loss of Black middle class neighborhoods that embodied the American dream of generational wealth. I grieve all the non-human lives that have been extinguished and uncounted and which float now in the air as smoke and ash.

Fire destroys, yet fire is also how we describe love and passion, the urge to create, and the desire to do better. We sing around campfires and we light candles in our religions. Giant sequoias and lodgepole pines need fire in order to release their seeds and regenerate.

Fire is complicated.

Process notes:
I’ve been writing mostly haiku for the first month and a half of #poemsforpersistence, but I’m feeling the urge to return to cheritas.

Today’s poem is comprised of three linked cheritas in which I answered my question of despair, “How is this all going to turn out?!?!” with what can seem grim in stanza/poem one; with the conundrum of the two faces of fire in stanza/poem two (and I’m pretty sure you’re savvy enough to realize I’m not just writing about literal fire); with, in stanza/poem three, the necessity for some kind of answer that can be ongoing and joyous (since…see stanza/poem one).

The image is another from The Public Domain Image Archive.

Tricia has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at The Miss Rumphius Effect.

Poetry Friday: Wandering

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Labyrinth

Left, right, left
Around and
Back
Your eyes on the path
Rhythm of steps matching breaths
In, out, in
Now the curves
Tighten and you find yourself
Here

(c) Mary Lee Hahn, 2025 draft

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I didn’t write much this week, between horror of the world burning down (both literally and figuratively), the joy of TWO snow days, and the sorrow of all the goodbyes for Jimmy Carter.

I dropped this image into a blank post yesterday evening after getting a little lost (somewhat like my poem, actually) in the newly released Public Domain Image Archive. Inspired this morning by Margaret and her students, I leaned into our old friend the acrostic. Like her post title declares, “Sometimes Acrostic Form Works!”

Kat Apel has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup all the way from Australia! No snow days there right now!

Poetry Friday: Wisdom (and the Roundup is HERE!)

Welcome to the 2025 edition of Poetry Friday! I’m thrilled to host the party and I can’t wait to see what dreams, resolutions, and rituals you bring to this potluck of poetry!

My dreams for 2025 include travel, scraps of fabric that become something else, and a garden filled with more native perennials. My resolutions, which trend towards the suggestion end of the mandatory –> suggestion spectrum, involve some painting, some art journaling, some stitching, some poetry reading, and a particular bi-weekly exercise class. Our New Year ritual is to listen to Strauss waltzes all day long on our local classical radio station, then end the day watching the Vienna Philharmonic New Year’s Concert on PBS. It doesn’t feel like a new year until we’ve clapped along to the Radetzky March.

Last year, Heidi invited the Inklings to participate in her family’s Yuletide celebration with a mobile of poetry prompts for Solstice through New Year’s Day. I shared my drafts for Generosity and Laughter last year.

For this month’s Inklings challenge, we returned to the mobile for new inspiration. I chose “What wisdom do you yearn for?” on 12/30 for my poem.

Here’s what the rest of the Inklings came up with, if life gave them the elbow room this month to write:

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

And here’s the roundup of all the First Poetry Friday of the New Year posts:


Poetry Friday: Haibun

Photo from Wikimedia Commons

The Poetry Sisters’ challenge for this month was to write a haibun. Here’s what the rest of the crew came up with:

Liz @ Liz Garton Scanlon
Tanita @ {fiction, instead of lies}
Laura @ Laura Purdie Salas
Tricia @ The Miss Rumphius Effect
Sara @ Read Write Believe

Michelle has this week’s Poetry Friday Roundup at MoreArt4All.

Poetry Friday: After E. D.

Emily Dickinson’s birthday was on 12/10 and this was the poem on The Writer’s Almanac. I borrowed all of Emily’s capitalized words (except the ones that begin the lines) and created this draft of a golden shovel:

Linda has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at A Word Edgewise.

Thanks to all who volunteered to host the Poetry Friday roundup Jan-June 2025. The roundup is filled!

Poetry Friday: Begin With a Sensory Experience

Molly gave the Inklings our December challenge: “Begin with a specific sensory experience (of taste, sight, smell, sound or touch), and see where that leads you.” This is part of a prompt from James Crews’s new book “Unlocking the Heart.” The experience of seeing wild turkeys at Highbanks provided the perfect answer to her challenge.

Here’s what the other Inklings did with this month’s challenge:

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

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

The call for hosts for the Poetry Friday roundups in Jan-June 2025 is here.

Poetry Friday: Roundup Call

It’s that time again. Six-ish months have passed since last we queued up to host the Poetry Friday roundups.

What is the Poetry Friday roundup? A gathering of links to posts featuring original or shared poems, or reviews of poetry books. A carnival of poetry posts. Here is an explanation that Rene LaTulippe shared on her blog, No Water River, and here is an article Susan Thomsen wrote for the Poetry Foundation.

Who can do the Poetry Friday roundup? Anyone who is willing to gather the links in some way, shape, or form (Mr. Linky, “old school” in the comments, or ???) on the Friday of your choice. If you are new to the Poetry Friday community, jump right in, but perhaps choose a date later on so that we can spend some time getting to know each other.

How do you do a Poetry Friday roundup? If you’re not sure, stick around for a couple of weeks and watch…and learn! One thing we’re finding out is that folks who schedule their posts, or who live in a different time zone than you, appreciate it when the roundup post goes live sometime on Thursday.

How do I get the code for the PF Roundup Schedule for the sidebar of my blog? You can grab the list from the sidebar here at A(nother) Year of Reading, or I’d be happy to send it to you if you leave me your email address. 

Why would I do a Poetry Friday Roundup? Community, community, community. It’s like hosting a poetry party on your blog!

Put your request in the comments (blog URL is appreciated) and I’ll update the calendar frequently. Feel free to share this post on all the various socials.

And now for the where and when:

January
3 Mary Lee at A(nother) Year of Reading
10 Kat at Kats Whiskers
17 Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect
24 Tabatha at The Opposite of Indifference
31 Jan at bookseedstudio

February
7 Carol at Beyond LiteracyLink
14 Linda at TeacherDance
21 Laura at Laura Purdie Salas
28 Denise at Dare to Care

March
7 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche
14 Janice at Salt City Verse
21 Rose at Imagine the Possibilities
28 Marcie at Marcie Flinchum Atkins

April
4 Matt at Radio, Rhythm & Rhyme
11 Irene at Live Your Poem
18 Jone at Jone Rush MacCulloch
25 Heidi at my juicy little universe

May
2 Molly at Nix the Comfort Zone
9 Sarah at Sarah Grace Tuttle
16 Ramona at Pleasures from the Page
23 Michelle at More Art for All
30 Karen at Karen Edmisten*

June
6 Buffy at Buffy Silverman
13 Ruth at There is no such thing as a God-forsaken town
20 Carol at The Apples in My Orchard
27 Tanita at {fiction, instead of lies}