Jane Yolen — Author of children’s books, fantasy, and science fiction, including Owl Moon, The Devil’s Arithmetic, and How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight? » Poetry I have been a poet and a poetry lover all my life. My first poem (yes my mother kept it for years) was hardly any guarantee that I would ever become any good. I was in first grade: Bus, bus, wait for us, We are going to school And we know the rule. By the time I was in third grade, I had improved mightily. Where is the Candy Cane Island, Where in the world can it be? Lucky for all of us I have forgotten the rest. Poetry informed much of my growing up. In high school in Connecticut, I had poetry in the literary magazine. By then, I was under the tutelage of poet Anthony Hecht who was teaching at Smith, and I sent out my poems in batches of five to magazines across America. My father—who was in publishing and public relations—thought he knew better. Despite this, Lee Bennett Hopkins wrote to tell me that a year ago he was at NCTE and brought up my name for the Poetry Award. So here are some of my poems to give you an example of the range that can be found in children’s poetry. Duck Parade
Poet-to-Poet Project For National Poetry Month 2014, we introduced Poet-to-Poet, a multimedia educational project that invites young people in grades three to twelve to write poems in response to those shared by some of the award-winning poets who serve on the Academy of American Poets Board of Chancellors: Poet Laureate of California Juan Felipe Herrera, National Book Critics Circle Award-winner Edward Hirsch, NEA and Guggenheim Fellow Jane Hirshfield, Lannan Foundation Fellow Naomi Shihab Nye, Pulitzer Prize-nominee Ron Padgett, Jackson Poetry Prize-winner Arthur Sze, and cofounder (with Allen Ginsberg) of the Naropa Institute Anne Waldman. We also worked with a curriculum specialist to design a series of activities, aligned with the Common Core for teachers to use in the classroom. go to the lesson plans
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