Poetic Novels

In this School Library Journal article, author Terry Farish explains why poetic novels are a natural form for historical fiction, stories of displaced people, and struggling readers. Here are some of the reactions she gets from students:

• “The verses are like tweets, a short form that our brains are adapting to.” 
• “The story is told in images, and it’s like you’re seeing frames in a movie.”
• “The length of the lines of the verses shaped the strands of a braid.” 
• “The lines made me read slowly.”
• “The lines made me race.” 

Farish recommends these verse books about new arrivals to the U.S. and their native countries:

• Home of the Brave by Katherine Applegate (Macmillan, 2007)

• The Lightning Dreamer: Cuba’s Greatest Abolitionist by Margarita Engle (Houghton 

Harcourt, 2013)

• The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba’s Struggle for Freedom by Margarita Engle (Macmillan, 

2008)

• The Good Braider by Terry Farish (Amazon, 2012)

• Downtown Boy by Juan Felipe Herrera (Scholastic, 2005)

• Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai (HarperCollins, 2011)

• Sold by Patricia McCormick (Hyperion, 2006)

• Karma by Cathy Ostlere (Penguin, 2011)

• Something About America by Maria Testa (Candlewick, 2005)

“Why Verse?” by Terry Farish in School Library Journal, November 2013 (Vol. 59, #11, p. 32-35), www.slj.com

From the Marshall Memo #512