Flowers For Socrates

by NONA BLYTH CLOUD

Whenever I do a column centered around a theme, like a holiday or a season of the year, instead of focusing on a specific author, I am confronted with reams of truly awful poetry written for children. Writing down to kids happens in far too much of kidlit and poetry.

Even the committee for the ALA’s prestigious Newbery Medal, given for the best in children’s literature since 1922, has come under criticism from children’s literary expert Anita Silvey, in a 2008 School Library Journal article, for choosing books “too difficult” for children to read.

I believe she failed to take into account how most children are first exposed to books. Parents and teachers read books to them. I was very fortunate that my book-loving mother read all kinds and levels of books to me. Her favorite author was Charles Dickens, so I heard A Christmas Carol every December of my childhood, and she read all of Ye Olde Curiosity Shop to me when I had the measles at age eight. Did I understand every word? Of course not, but I could understand enough to be enthralled. Richard Burton often said he got his love of words from his father, who started reading Shakespeare and the Bible to him when he was still in the cradle.

Once children fall in love with hearing stories, they start wanting to read the storybooks for themselves. My favorite book of all remains The Wind in the Willows. This kidlit classic has a vocabulary that’s definitely on the level of a well-read adult – no easy read for children. Yet it is still in print 110 years after it was first published, in editions illustrated by a number of notable artists, a testament to the enduring appeal of Mole and Ratty, Mr. Toad and Badger.

If words become classified as “preschool through first grade” words, or “middle school” vocabulary, then writers start limiting the words in their books aimed at young readers to get them published. I still remember the first time I read the word “azure” in Walter Farley’s The Black Stallion, and the word “spoor” in Edgar Rice Burroughs’ At the Earth’s Core. The context made “azure” clear to me, but I had to look up “spoor.” They are lovely words, and I would be the poorer if I had never learned them.

So I was delighted when seeking a subject for this week’s post to discover the works of Joyce Sidman (1956 – ). She writes both prose and poetry for children, and sometimes for adults. Her poems have been dubbed “accessible,” but she uses words like collossal,  ubiquitous and porcupette which probably are new to her audience. Porcupette was certainly new to me – it’s the name for a baby porcupine.

As she explains it, “As soon as I found out that baby porcupines were called “porcupettes”, I knew I had to write a poem about them. They are brave souls, spending a lot of their time alone while their parents roam for food or sleep far above them in treetops.”

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Porcupette

I am a baby porcupette.
My paws are small, my nose is wet.
And as I nurse against my mom,
we mew and coo a soft duet.

I am a baby porcupette.
I cannot climb up branches yet.
While mom sleeps in the trees, I hide
beneath a log till sun has set.

I am a baby porcupette.
I nibble in the nighttime wet:
a sprig of leaves, a tuft of grass
in hidden spots I won’t forget.

I am a baby porcupette
My fur is soft, my eyes are jet.
But I can deal with any threat:
I raise my quills
and pirouette.

This poem seems very simple, but she’s using imagery like “nightime wet,” “a sprig of leaves” and “I raise my quills and pirouette.”

“Porcupette” from Dark Emperor and Other Poems of the Night, © 2010 by Joyce Sidman – Houghton Mifflin Books for Children

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