Note: I've gone in a darker directions and found some different takes... more to follow after... I hold the chocolate-chip cookie like a coin from a grave —its crust a dry, papery skin, scored with tiny fossil chips.They glitter as if with teeth, dull embers caught in brittle sugar.Beneath that shell I imagine a warm, … Continue reading Revisionist Poetry – My Relationship with a Cookie, v.4 – Retitled -> The Cookie in the Icebox
The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – Love You Forever by Robert Munsch
At first glance Robert Munsch’s Love You Forever presents itself as the kind of picture book that trades in the obvious—short sentences, a repeating refrain, and a domestic tableau meant to reassure a child at bedtime. Read more closely, however, the book’s spare language and circular structure sustain a far more complicated emotional logic: a … Continue reading The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – Love You Forever by Robert Munsch
Revisionist Poetry – My Relationship with a Cookie, v.3
I study this chocolate-chip thing on the plate, its surface a brittle grammar with chips of gold. You can see only a few bright truths at first — crumb constellations clinging to the shell. What the inside must hold: slow heat, brown sugar hymns, a small dark architecture of salt and memory. If I tear … Continue reading Revisionist Poetry – My Relationship with a Cookie, v.3
The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – Mortimer by Robert Munsch
Mortimer reads at first like a comic domestic sketch: it’s bedtime, Mortimer refuses, Mortimer makes a racket, and every adult who enters the scene fails to quiet him. But beneath that simple spine of plot sits the set of a small stage where Munsch — working in his characteristic oral-storytelling register — orchestrates an escalating … Continue reading The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – Mortimer by Robert Munsch
Revisionist Poetry – My Relationship with a Cookie, v.2
Study the chocolate-chip cookie — a thin, hard planet of sugar. On its skin, chips glint like constellations; beneath, a warmer gravity. I could bite deep and erase the softened center, or nibble forever and never hear the single true note it keeps for itself. So I wrap a corner in foil, ladle fragments into … Continue reading Revisionist Poetry – My Relationship with a Cookie, v.2
The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – Mud Puddle by Robert Munsch
Robert Munsch’s Mud Puddle reads like a tiny masterpiece of oral storytelling compressed into thirty-two pages: brisk, comic, cumulative, and animated by a single, delightfully absurd conceit — a mud puddle that repeatedly “jumps on” a child and gets her “completely all over muddy.” The story began as a tale told in a nursery school … Continue reading The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – Mud Puddle by Robert Munsch
Revisionist Poetry – The Apple Tree, v.5
Schooltime in early autumn;the playground is full but hollow,the out-of-bounds field calls, more tempting. The field bristles with burrs and the hush of dying grass,yet the apple tree insists, irresistible and small. We climb to be kings on the age-old tree,claiming crowns from the highest, wind-scarred branches. Power is kept in an arsenal of apples—tokens … Continue reading Revisionist Poetry – The Apple Tree, v.5
The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – Thomas’ Snowsuit by Robert Munsch
Thomas' Snowsuit by Robert Munsch turns a domestic, wintertime battle into an energetic miniature drama: a small boy resists the ritual of being bundled for cold weather, and the adult attempt at care escalates into a comic standoff. The narrative depends on repetition, mounting absurdity, and a tight point of view that keeps the reader … Continue reading The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – Thomas’ Snowsuit by Robert Munsch
Revisionist Poetry – The Apple Tree, v.4
Schooltime in early autumnthe playground is full butthe out-of-bounds field calls, more tempting. The field bristles with burrs,yet the apple tree remains irresistible We race to be kings on the age-old treeclaiming crowns from the highest branches Power is kept in an arsenal of applesall glossy, ripe, but oddly inedible. Old ogres and crones patrol … Continue reading Revisionist Poetry – The Apple Tree, v.4
The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – The Paper Bag Princess by Robert Munsch
At first glance The Paper Bag Princess is the kind of picture book one might read in five minutes and, in good conscience, tuck back on a shelf. Read closely, however, it behaves more like a miniature manifesto: a tight, witty demolition of fairy-tale expectations that nevertheless leaves room to teach — not by sermonizing, … Continue reading The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – The Paper Bag Princess by Robert Munsch
The New Renaissance Mindset 