Papa Is a Poet: A Story About Robert Frost by Natalie S. Bober

Papa Is a Poet: A Story About Robert Frost by Natalie S. Bober, illustrated by Rebecca Gibbon

Rating: 4.5 stars

Sometimes I think I'm overdoing it just a bit.  I mean, how many serious-ish nonfiction books do kids really want to read?  I rationalize my filled-to-the-brim-with-books household by telling myself that I pick out books and leave them lying around, available, in case curiosity motivates one or two or all of my children to pick it up and read it. I also let them choose plenty of books on their own; they are not left to my nerdy selections.

Papa Is a Poet is long and wordy and serious, so it is definitely in that last category.  Bober tells the story of Robert Frost--as told from the perspective of Lesley, one of his daughters.  She tells us, the reader, of the day they returned from a two year, poetry-writing stint in England, when her father saw at a newsstand a published collection of his works, North of Boston.  He was surprised! Frost hadn't been told by any American publisher of its creation, but was overjoyed to have met success on this side of the Atlantic.

Lesley thinks back to simpler times, before her family sold their farm to raise the funds to go to England.  They lived on a farm, and Robert Frost was a poultry farmer.  Theirs was a nature-filled childhood, with streams and flowers and trees and each other to play in and around and with. Robert and his wife home schooled their children, and their life was full of books.  Their days were "ordinary but meaningful. The cupboard was often bare, yet life was filled to the brim."

Poetry--playing with words, finding the humor or beauty in simple things, and creating metaphors--ran through his veins, but he felt that it wasn't an acceptable pastime for a father of a large family.  He felt he was a "disappointing failure" in the eyes of neighbors and family, so they sold the farm and moved. They flipped a coin to decide where to go. The coin landed on heads, so they went to England--if it had landed on tails, they'd have gone to Vancouver. Choosing to be a full-time poet was a crazy, almost reckless decision, but he did it. And look, he did it so very well.

Why tell this story, read this book to young girls and boys like Lorelei (age 7)?

1. Robert Frost is one of the greatest American poets, and now she has a little background, a little context to the lesson she'll soon get from a teacher. She'll know he was a dad and had kids and made up little rhymes for his family, and maybe...maybe his poetry will be not be so intimidating.
2. I don't love how Bober sprinkles in Frost's poetry.  I think she feels obligated to, and I appreciate her attempt. While I don't think it usually works, I love that his most famous lines (see below) are in there, and that Lorelei knows about them and we can talk about them when making choices.
3. Speaking of choices, I really like that this story is about one man struggling to make a choice--and it's a tough one for a man with poems in his head but mouths to feed.  I'm always telling Lorelei and her brothers that there are lots of choices, but no perfect one, but you have to trust your gut, take a risk, and then give that choice your all. Robert Frost did that.
4. Personally, poetry didn't make a lot of sense when I was in school.  I realize now how fun it can be, how poets play with words and say things in tricky ways that challenge the reader to think, and I want to introduce that concept to my kids little by little, stanza by stanza.
5. Their days were "ordinary but meaningful." The book is worth it for just that--a reminder that we don't need lots of gizmos and gadgets.  The simple things, especially when done with humor and appreciation, sure do mean a lot.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Other books on poetry you might want to check out:
Guyku: A Year of Haiku for Boys (Raczka)
Poem-Mobiles: Crazy Car Poems (Lewis)
Runny Babbit (Silverstein)
And pretty much anything by Dr Suess, of course!

Elizabeth Leads the Way by Tanya Lee Stone

Elizabeth Leads the Way: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the Right to Vote by Tanya Lee Stone, illustrated by Rebecca Gibbon

Rating: 4 stars

Tanya Lee Stone grabs her young audience immediately:

What would you do
if someone told you
you can't be what you want to be
because you are a girl?

You better believe that it's surprising for a first grader to hear that your voice doesn't matter just because she's a girl!  Wonderfully, Elizabeth was also surprised to hear that when she was young; even more wonderfully, she had the moxie inside her to do something about it.  When she was thirteen, her father died, and everything was taken away from her mother--because without a husband, nothing belonged to her.

This fired up Elizabeth and she decided "right then and there that she could do anything any boy could do."

Her personal life began to look unlike any other woman's: she jumped hurdles while horseback, she rafted across rivers, she studied in college.  She met Henry Stanton, who believed in her strong will and encouraged her to continue to be her after they married.  She raised seven (!) kids.  One day, she and her girlfriends had lunch and got to chatting about all the things that women should be able to do, and all of these things could be available to women if only one thing: women could vote.

Her husband wondered if she had gone too far.

When she was finished,
she looked into the faces of the crowd and waited.

But Elizabeth continued anyway, and stirred up a whole lot of trouble as she attempted to break the (unfair) norm.  And she continued to talk and to work and to stir up trouble (aka affect change) until she did it: she helped women achieve the right to vote.

Altogether, Stone has given us an inspiring book that is done very well for a young audience.

I've been wondering lately if I'm checking out too many nonfiction books.  Am I pushing facts on to Lorelei?  Should I step back a little and let her choose more of her own books?  She's studious enough, maybe I should encourage her humorous side a bit for a change?

And then, last week, I chaperoned a field trip with her class.  It was a long trip into Washington, D.C.--I got to ride the school bus and everything.  The stops planned were: the Old Post Office, Capitol, Washington Monument, and Lincoln Memorial.

Someone knew someone, and we not only walked around the Capitol but the kids also got a tour of the rotunda.  To be honest, most of the facts that our very young guide shared with our group flew over the kids' heads.  He was hard to hear and it was loud and his speciality was not in captivating a young audience.  But after he spoke he encouraged us to walk around and look at all the statues in the room.  I turned to look at the one nearest us; it was of three women who fought for women's suffrage.

The statue in the rotunda

We had had this book lying around for a while, so I asked Lorelei: "That statue is of Elizabeth Cady Stanton.  Do you know who she is?"

Lorelei: "No.  Oh wait!  Is she the woman from Elizabeth Leads the Way?"

Yup.  And yup, we'll be continuing to have great nonfiction books like these to introduce her to important figures and broaden her general knowledge.

Here are a few of the lessons I hope Lorelei gains from this book, and those like it:

1. Individuals matter--one person's actions can affect a whole lot of change.
2. Times were different "back then"--you've got to know what happened before, so you can better appreciate what's happening today.
3. Women can raise kids and be important outside the home--wait, is that a lesson I am telling myself, or Lorelei...?

Players in Pigtails by Shana Corey, illustrated by Rebecca Gibson

Players in Pigtails by Shana Corey, illustrated by Rebecca Gibson

Rating: 4.5 stars

"Crying?  There's no crying in baseball!" is one of my all-time favorite lines from any movie, delivered by Tom Hanks in A League of Their Own.

But that line is NOT in this book about Katie Casey, a girl who is not very good at being a typical girl and busying herself with piano or painting or home-ec or dancing.  Instead, she was obsessed with baseball.  She could catch a ball with her eyes closed, hit a ball with one hand behind her back.  "She preferred sliding to sewing, batting to baking, and home runs to homecoming."

I love girls like these--in real life and in books!

Because America was at war and the boys were going away to war, girls were suddenly called upon to take up the sport.  As soon as Katie Casey heard about tryouts, she was there.  Happily, she found herself surrounded by other like-minded women who wanted to talk about the quality of their curve balls instead of the hue of their lipstick.  Soon Katie was playing for the Kenosha Comets, in front of a surprisingly enthusiastic crowd.  (But only after attending finishing school and donning skirts...chuckle, chuckle...)

Who knew that the super famous--I even know some of the words--"Take Me Out to the Ball Game" was about a girl?!  I love being armed with this knowledge.  The author, Shana Corey, discovered this and couldn't shake the idea to write a children's book about Katie.  I love that she couldn't NOT write it, and I love having this book available to little girls (and boys, too).  Check this out, the lesser-known first verse and the well-known chorus, which means a lot more to me now:

Katie Casey was baseball mad.
Had the fever and had it bad;
Just to root for the hometown crew,
Every sou Katie blew.
On a Saturday her young beau
Called to see if she'd like to go
To see a show, but Miss Kate said...
"Not I'll tell you what you can do." 

"Take me out to the ball game,
Take me out to the crowd.
Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack,
I don't care if I never get back,
Let me root, root, root for the home team,
If they don't win it's a shame.
For it's one, two, three strikes you're out
At the old ball game."

Lorelei and her little contemporaries won't know the limits that Katie Casey knew and fought against, thanks to Title 9 and time.  But even when we went to the baseball game on Father's Day, she asked why girls weren't playing.  She wants to do all the things that Ben can do and hopefully want to do them better.

It's great to have a book to explain that once they did, and maybe once again...they can.

And now...a very short clip on Women's Baseball in WWII: