Writing Exercise: Sibling Rivalry?

Recommended for: Upper Elementary and Above

Poetry, Memoir or Fiction We’re going to bust up the “my sibling is so annoying” stereotype. If you're a kids' lit author, this is a great exercise for you. How do we do escape the stereotype without taking all the tension out of sib relationships?

One choice is to write about a moment when the balance tipped – unexpectedly – from playful to dangerous. (Poet Marie Howe has some wonderful poems on this topic.) Another choice, good for younger writers, is to write about the game that you and your brother play – the game no one else understands or knows the rules for.

An example: a friend of mine thinks her children hate each other. She doesn’t know (I found out from my kids, who are friends with her kids), that her two children have secret discussions through the bathroom door. My own children once addressed Christmas presents to each other with names I didn't recognize -- names from an imaginary world they'd made up.

For those of us who no longer live with our sisters, option 3: Choose a moment that symbolizes the sibling relationship for you. (Like the time I was babysitting my brother and his friend Doug and the two stinkers went on strike against me. Picket signs and everything. Points for creativity.) I’ve been working on a sibling poem for several years. Below is a version from 1996 – I couldn’t find the latest revision! I’d been to Israel and Egypt in 1990. You’ll see the influence of the desert landscape. The siblings in my poem get along. The tension comes from parents, outsiders in this landscape (choice #4). If you like this last idea, check out Ray Bradbury’s short story, “The Veldt.” The parents in his future world are outsiders in the extreme. You'll find the story in his book, “The Illustrated Man.” Bedouin

Laura Shovan Bounding downstairs in his leopard skin bathrobe and Underoos, he scavenges milk and cereal with marshmallows. The younger kids follow. Breakfast done, building begins. They slide down the stairs on blankets raided from the upstairs closet. Chairs make good tent poles. Books and table weights keep out sand. He crawls inside first, as eldest son, proclaims it safe. “The carpet is a creeping desert,” he says, “So hot it might burn your feet. I can already see blisters.” Feeling their bare soles redden and swell they scramble underneath where the light is blue from blankets and the glow of cartoons on TV. They watch, entranced, huddling together against the approach of sandstorms, hungry animals, something catastrophic, afternoon. Upstairs their parents wake to parched throats, sandy eyes. It is too quiet, they say. Cautiously, they move downstairs, and find a tent-city, where they are tourists. Gone is the comfortable room, the plaid couches, the easy chairs, the decorative plants. The children, inside their tents, are watching the sun rise orange over the dunes.

Check the previous post and related comments for more on the sibling theme, including some great comments from kids’ lit bloggers about books that include realistic siblings.

One I read recently with my kids was Elizabeth Enright’s, Gone Away Lake. It won a Newbery Honor in ’57. The main characters are a sister, younger brother, and the cousin they spend the summer with.

Happy Poetry Friday Birthday, Daughter J!

It’s NinjaGirl’s birthday today. She is nine. Nine!

The lucky girl shares a birthday with Joe Flacco, Baltimore Ravens QB. She could care less. The rest of Baltimore (including her sports-radio addicted mother) is "Wacko for Flacco" as we battle Sunday with the Pittsburgh Steelers for a Superbowl spot.

Her birthday has me thinking about relationships, siblings in particular. I was fussing about in the kitchen one day a few years ago and looked up to see our son (3 years older) and daughter playing in the next room. Something about their play stopped me. I stepped into the room and said, “Do you realize that you’re best friends?” Their response: “Uh, Mom, we know that.” Laughter about Mom’s “duh” moment. Back to playing. I’ve fictionalized their friendship in a free-verse picture book, The Waiting Flower. It’s been at a small publisher, Flashlight Press, for one year! Any minute now, I’ll hear my phone ringing (my year-long mantra). While I’m waiting, a poem about friendship: The Arrow and the Song By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I shot an arrow into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where; For, so swiftly it flew, the sight Could not follow it in its flight. I breathed a song into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where; For who has sight so keen and strong, That it can follow the flight of song? Long, long afterward, in an oak I found the arrow, still unbroke; And the song, from beginning to end, I found again in the heart of a friend. I love how the stiff arrow is found unchanged. Our locked-in views and ways of thinking leave no room for conversation. The more fluid song is welcoming. Once it’s in the friend’s heart the song becomes something new. I’m tired of the media – TV and children’s books – going for the easy stereotype of embattled siblings. Love the Arthur series on PBS, hate the way they portray Arthur and DW’s relationship. Loved Meg Cabot’s first Allie Finkle book (read a Q&A about the book with Meg Cabot), but Allie and her younger bros never get beyond annoying one another.

The truth about siblings is much more complicated and often more positive. Anyone know of some books where the sibs actually get along? Why not show kids the behavior we aim for, rather than go for the easy stereotype? FYI – One of my favorite parenting books, tops on raising sibs, is Siblings Without Rivalry by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish. Come back for a writing exercise on siblings tomorrow…

Meanwhile, check at Big A, Little A for this week's Poetry Friday host.

Oh -- it's Karen Edmisten!

Writing Exercise: Science & Symbolism

Recommended Ages: Middle School and Up Start by reading our model poem, Mary Oliver's "Bats." I've got part of the poem in this post, or you can find it in an anthology called "Nightwalks." For your poem, follow Oliver's structure. First, explore or list the facts about your object/theme. You might chose an animal, like Oliver did, or something less tangible like "dreams." The turn of the poem is that word, "Yet." You've talked science. Now it's time for the symbolize. Forget the facts for the rest of the poem. Here's your chance to mull over the deeper, unexplainable things your object suggests. Since I've been working with Audubon's "American Flamingo" in my Maryland Humanities Council poetry workshops, I'll have to go with that bird as my object. Here's my brainstorming for a science and symbolism poem. Flamingo Science: Marsh wader, yogini balanced on one leg, like an apple tree in bloom, webbed foot clinging to the rock. Marble eyes blue as the water your boomerang beak scoops for shrimp. You are the color of your dinner. Symbolism: Yet, your feathers might be pale as the inside of a shell or pink as a vacation sunburn. Cotton candy, bubble gum, hotel towel washed too many times. Children ask me if you fly like a parasail over the beach. Not that I've seen. What did John James Audubon think when he first saw a flock -- a shock to the corner of his eye -- of pink in summer sky? One thing I've learned working with this image from Picturing America -- flamingos only exist in captivity in today's U.S.