NCTE Award Winning Poet: Eloise Greenfield

Bibliography:

Greenfield, Eloise. 2004. In The Land of Words: New and Selected Poems. Ill. Gilchrist, Jan Spivey. USA: HarperCollins. ISBN: 0060289937

Review:

NCTE award winning poet, Eloise Greenfield has written a book that is an excellent introduction to poetry for young readers. In The Land of Words: New and Selected Poems is actually a combination of new poems and poems that Ms. Greenfield has previously written. The book is a tribute to poems, poetry, stories and words. The book is divided into two parts: Part I is titled “The Poet/The Poem”. In this section, each poem is introduced by the author and explains the inspiration behind the poem and what she was thinking as she wrote it. Part II is titled “In The Land”. In this section, there are poems about books, stories, jokes, riddles poems, words and how people feel about reading and writing. All of the poems in the book are easily accessible by young students and are concrete in nature. Children will love the strong rhythm and rhyme in the poems. Here is an example of this strong rhythm and beat : from Nathaniel’s Rap:

It’s Nathaniel talking/and Nathaniel’s me/I’m talking about/my philosophy/About the people I see/All told in the words/Of Nathaniel B. Free/That’s me/And I can rap/I can rap/I can rap, rap, rap/Til your earflaps flap….

I love the feel of this poem. I can feel Nathaniel’s energy, and desire to express his opinions about everything. In addition to the strong rhythmic poems, many of the poems use strong rhyming phrases. The rhymes roll off the tongue and are fun to read aloud. Greenfield truly understands children and the poetry that they will love. This a wonderful book to share with students and to explore the way words and imagination can be used to express how you feel about everything. Jan Spivey Gilchrist illustrated the poems in beautiful fabric collage. The bright felt illustrations are very detailed and add to the appeal of the book.

Poem Selection:

It was difficult to decide which poem to share in this post. I decided to share two in order to show the uniqueness of the book. As stated earlier, Part I of the book is titled “The Poet/The Poem. What I really liked about this section is the introduction to each poem that Ms. Greenfield gives. I would use this book to introduce students to the thought process involved in writing. Too often students think that writing is just sitting down and writing-on demand! Ms. Greenfield’s explanations are the perfect way to dispel that idea. I would read the title to each of the poems, and then read the introduction. I would then ask students to tell what they think about the specific activity and write on chart paper in order to facilitate the sights, smells, sounds, tastes and touch of the specific activity. Here is an excerpt from To Catch a Fish. Ms. Greenfield explains: “This poem was inspired by a painting by Amos Ferguson. I thought of the patience it takes to go fishing” (pg.16).

It takes more than a wish/to catch a fish/you take the hook/you add the bait/you concentrate/and then you wait/you wait/you wait….

As I read this poem, I could just picture myself sitting on the dock or in a boat going fishing. What an excellent way to explore the feelings of an activity with children and the creative ways to write about those experiences.

My favorite poem in the book is Story. It truly expresses how I feel when I read-and how I want all of my students to feel.

I step into the story,/I leave my world behind,/I let the walls of story/Be the walls around my mind./New faces and new voices,/I listen and I see,/and people I have never met/mean everything to me./I worry when they worry,/I quake when danger’s near,/I hold my breath and hope/that all their troubles disappear./ I don’t know what will happen,/I never know what I’ll find,/when I step into a story/and leave my world behind.