Once again, I’m down to the wire meeting Michelle Heidenrich Barnes’s ditty challenge. (My favorite poem, “Two Sunflowers Move Into the Yellow Room,” seems particularly poignant today.) Still, I’m embarrassed to confess that I wasn’t aware of Willard’s poetry for adults until I read Yolen’s piece earlier this week. Of course I loved it immediately and have shared it with students ever since. And although I read to him from the day we came home from the hospital, William Blake’s Inn didn’t capture my attention until several years later when I went back to school to get my teaching certificate. Willard’s Newbery winning book, A Visit to William Blake’s Inn (Harcourt Brace, 1981) was published the year my son was born. Their collection of poetry, Among Angels, was the result of this “rather delicious correspondence.” ( The Horn Book, March/April 2009, p. This is how I stumbled upon a short piece by Jane Yolen recalling her correspondence with Nancy Willard. So I skim the table of contents, scan a review or two, succumb to Newbery acceptance speeches from years gone by. I can’t just toss these compact containers of wisdom and goodness. In my never-ending effort to reduce the stacks of New Yorkers and The Horn Book tucked away in various corners of my house, I’ve started purging.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |