My summer project: revising my middle grade book, "We Rule the School: A Fifth Grade Yearbook."
It's a combination of "self-portrait" poems & occasional poems that cover one year in the life of a central-Maryland fifth grade class.
Here is one of the occasional poems, written in the voice of two boys in the class. They're on their way to Mt. Vernon for a field trip.
Send comments! (Pls. ignore references to other characters for now. You'll have to wait for the book!)
Bus-ting Out: Field Trip Poem
It’s Thursday but we got no school.
We’re on a field trip, hey that’s cool.
Where we going? George Washington’s place.
Gonna see the fake teeth he wore in his face.
Harry’s in the back row drumming a beat.
Girls Miss Mary Macking between the seats.
Chaperones up front chatting away.
Gray Torres snuck his DS and we all wanna play.
Miss Hill wearing jeans, first time this year.
There’s Nationals Stadium – everybody gotta cheer.
Ashlie Hauk singing a song we all know.
Jason Chen beat boxes. He got the flow.
Uno cards flying when we hit a pot hole.
Waving at the White House and the National Mall.
Girls text the boys, making a fuss.
Best part of a field trip is riding the bus.
Uno cards flying when we hit a pot hole.
Waving at the White House and the National Mall.
Girls text the boys, making a fuss.
Best part of a field trip is riding the bus.(My book, "We Rule the School," owes a lot to Edgar Lee Master's Spoon River Anthology. I'm a huge fan.)
Our host for this week's Poetry Friday is Kelly Herold at Crossover. Have a great first weekend of summer.
7 comments:
Love it! You captured the chaos of the bus ride to a field trip PERFECTLY! (Except, of course, I'd be on Gray Torres like white on rice and have that DS in my bag until we got back to school!!!)
Thanks for the feedback. I'm really excited about this project. Glad you like the poem.
Fun poem. I got into the rhythm of it right away. The book sounds tres cool :).
Fun poem. I had forgotten what it was like on those trips.
Just read your poem -- fun! I like it a lot. You don't even have to know who the children are to get it.
Love the details and the voice! I chaperoned a spring break trip to D.C. once, and the bus ride was a lot like this without the high-tech (since this was 20 years ago!).
I especially loved the girls Miss Mary Macking between the seats (they still do that!?) and the Uno cards flying. Great feelings of sound, motion, and mood here! Yay!
Thanks, Tabatha! This project has been so much fun. I'm finishing up a major revision now.
Laura -- I'm obsessed with my 9-year-olds counting out rhymes. You wouldn't believe some of the modern variations. I'll have to put the one about the Granny who's 99 and thinks she's fine in a Poetry Friday post.
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