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A Kick in the Head
An Everyday Guide to Poetic Forms
Edited by Paul B. Janeczko
Written by Paul B. Janeczko
Illustrated by Chris Raschka
FORMAT:
Paperback
$9.99
"Readers will have the good fortune to experience poetry as art, game, joke, list, song, story, statement, question, memory. A primer like no other." — School Library Journal (starred review)
In this splendid and playful volume — second of a trilogy — an acclaimed creative team presents examples of twenty-nine poetic forms, demonstrating not only the (sometimes bendable) rules of poetry, but also the spirit that brings these forms to life. Featuring poems from the likes of Eleanor Farjeon (aubade), X. J. Kennedy (elegy), Ogden Nash (couplet), Liz Rosenberg (pantoum), and William Shakespeare, the sonnet king himself, A Kick in the Head perfectly illustrates Robert Frost’s maxim that poetry without rules is like a tennis match without a net.
Back matter includes notes on poetic forms.
- ISBN: 9780763641320
- Age range: 8 to 12
- Page count: 64
- Dimensions: 9.84 x 9.84 in
- Publication date: March 10, 2009
- Price: $9.99
Awards:
- Bank Street College Claudia Lewis Award for Poetry (Winner)
- Maine Library Association Lupine Award (Winner)
- Parents’ Choice Award (Winner)
- The WOW! Awards (Winner)
More Titles Paul B. Janeczko
Secret Soldiers: How the U.S. Twenty-Third Special Troops Fooled the Nazis
Paul B. Janeczko
Paul B. Janeczko
The Proper Way to Meet a Hedgehog and Other How-To Poems
Paul B. Janeczko, Paul B. Janeczko, Richard Jones
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The Death of the Hat: A Brief History of Poetry in 50 Objects
Paul B. Janeczko, Chris Raschka
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About the Creator(s)
Paul B. Janeczko (1945–2019) was a poet and teacher who edited numerous award-winning poetry anthologies for young people, including A Poke in the I, A Kick in the Head, A Foot in the Mouth, and The Death of the Hat, all of which were illustrated by Chris Raschka; Firefly July, illustrated by Melissa Sweet; and The Proper Way to Meet a Hedgehog and Other How-To Poems, illustrated by Richard Jones. He also wrote Worlds Afire; Requiem: Poems of the Terezín Ghetto; Top Secret: A Handbook of Codes, Ciphers, and Secret Writing; Double Cross: Deception Techniques in War; The Dark Game: True Spy Stories from Invisible Ink to CIA Moles, a finalist for the YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults; and Secret Soldiers: How the U.S. Twenty-Third Special Troops Fooled the Nazis.
I didn’t start out to be a writer. I started out as a kid in New Jersey who had two major goals in life: (1) survive one more year of delivering newspapers without being attacked by Ike, the one-eyed, crazed cur that lurked in the forsythia bushes at the top of the hill; and (2) become more than a weak-hitting, third-string catcher on our sorry Little League team. I failed at both.
Had I announced at the dinner table, “Mom, Dad, I’ve decided to be a poet,” my parents—especially my mother—would have been thrilled. In truth, they would have been thrilled that I’d decided to be anything other than a Top 40 disc jockey, Edsel salesman, or bullpen catcher I constantly talked about becoming in junior high.
But at that point in my life, poetry—and school, in general, for that matter—meant no more to me than gerunds, the Belgian Congo, or George Washington’s wooden teeth. I was only “gifted” on Christmas and my birthday. I didn’t like school. I did as little homework as possible. I participated in class only under duress from the nuns. Before sixth grade, I wasn’t even much of a reader. My reading was limited largely to baseball magazines, the daily sports page—usually carefully read over a chocolate egg cream in the local candy store—and the backs of baseball cards old and new. I was captivated by those color pictures of men wearing five o’clock shadows and baggy pants.
Luckily for me, however, I discovered the Hardy Boys. Frank and Joe set me straight about the joys of reading. Somehow I made it through high school and I even found one college that would take me. That’s when my life changed. At college I was with kids who had read books I hadn’t read, knew about plays that I’d never heard of, and could talk about music, literature, and the arts. That was when I realized how much time I had wasted in high school. That’s when it dawned on me that it was time for me to start learning.
After college, where I actually did quite well, I headed to graduate school and then started teaching. I taught high-school English for twenty-two years in Ohio, Massachusetts, and Maine. I left the classroom in 1990, when my daughter was born. I’ve been fortunate to have published nearly fifty books.
I usually spend about thirty-five days each year visiting schools. Over the past twenty years I have visited hundreds of schools from Maine to Alaska and even in Europe. When I’m not visiting schools, I’m usually in my office in my home in the foothills of western Maine working on books.
Three Things You Might Not Know About Me:
1. High on my list of things-that-drive-me-nuts are socks that don’t stay up, drivers who don’t signal, and the Red Sox losing to the Yankees.
2. I walk a few miles, meditate, and do yoga nearly every day.
3. My wife wishes I would keep the door to my office shut because she thinks the room is an incredible mess. I prefer to think of it is as exhibiting creative chaos. A little chaos is good.
Paul B. Janeczko (1945–2019) was a poet and teacher who edited numerous award-winning poetry anthologies for young people, including A Poke in the I, A Kick in the Head, A Foot in the Mouth, and The Death of the Hat, all of which were illustrated by Chris Raschka; Firefly July, illustrated by Melissa Sweet; and The Proper Way to Meet a Hedgehog and Other How-To Poems, illustrated by Richard Jones. He also wrote Worlds Afire; Requiem: Poems of the Terezín Ghetto; Top Secret: A Handbook of Codes, Ciphers, and Secret Writing; Double Cross: Deception Techniques in War; The Dark Game: True Spy Stories from Invisible Ink to CIA Moles, a finalist for the YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults; and Secret Soldiers: How the U.S. Twenty-Third Special Troops Fooled the Nazis.
I didn’t start out to be a writer. I started out as a kid in New Jersey who had two major goals in life: (1) survive one more year of delivering newspapers without being attacked by Ike, the one-eyed, crazed cur that lurked in the forsythia bushes at the top of the hill; and (2) become more than a weak-hitting, third-string catcher on our sorry Little League team. I failed at both.
Had I announced at the dinner table, “Mom, Dad, I’ve decided to be a poet,” my parents—especially my mother—would have been thrilled. In truth, they would have been thrilled that I’d decided to be anything other than a Top 40 disc jockey, Edsel salesman, or bullpen catcher I constantly talked about becoming in junior high.
But at that point in my life, poetry—and school, in general, for that matter—meant no more to me than gerunds, the Belgian Congo, or George Washington’s wooden teeth. I was only “gifted” on Christmas and my birthday. I didn’t like school. I did as little homework as possible. I participated in class only under duress from the nuns. Before sixth grade, I wasn’t even much of a reader. My reading was limited largely to baseball magazines, the daily sports page—usually carefully read over a chocolate egg cream in the local candy store—and the backs of baseball cards old and new. I was captivated by those color pictures of men wearing five o’clock shadows and baggy pants.
Luckily for me, however, I discovered the Hardy Boys. Frank and Joe set me straight about the joys of reading. Somehow I made it through high school and I even found one college that would take me. That’s when my life changed. At college I was with kids who had read books I hadn’t read, knew about plays that I’d never heard of, and could talk about music, literature, and the arts. That was when I realized how much time I had wasted in high school. That’s when it dawned on me that it was time for me to start learning.
After college, where I actually did quite well, I headed to graduate school and then started teaching. I taught high-school English for twenty-two years in Ohio, Massachusetts, and Maine. I left the classroom in 1990, when my daughter was born. I’ve been fortunate to have published nearly fifty books.
I usually spend about thirty-five days each year visiting schools. Over the past twenty years I have visited hundreds of schools from Maine to Alaska and even in Europe. When I’m not visiting schools, I’m usually in my office in my home in the foothills of western Maine working on books.
Three Things You Might Not Know About Me:
1. High on my list of things-that-drive-me-nuts are socks that don’t stay up, drivers who don’t signal, and the Red Sox losing to the Yankees.
2. I walk a few miles, meditate, and do yoga nearly every day.
3. My wife wishes I would keep the door to my office shut because she thinks the room is an incredible mess. I prefer to think of it is as exhibiting creative chaos. A little chaos is good.
“I always try to treat the book itself as the artwork,” Chris Raschka says. “I don’t want you to stop while you’re reading one of my books and say, ‘Oh! What a gorgeous illustration!’ I want you to stop at the end of the book and say, ‘This is a good book.’”
Chris Raschka is one of those people who knew from an early age what he wanted to be when he grew up. “It was never a question in my mind,” he says. “As long as I can remember, I always knew what I would do: I would become a biologist.” Somewhere along the line, however, after having to kill a mouse with his bare hands, Chris Raschka began to change his mind. “I understood it intellectually,” he says, “but I just wasn’t cut out to do that.”
Fortunately, Chris Raschka’s squeamishness turned into a boon for the realm of children’s books. He decided to shift his focus to painting and drawing, and has since produced a range of outstanding books that has Publishers Weekly calling him “one of the most original illustrators at work today.” Chris Raschka illustrated A Poke in the I: A Collection of Concrete Poems, a critically acclaimed anthology that was both a New York Times Book Review Best Illustrated Children’s Book and a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year. “I approached it with a version of the Hippocratic oath,” Chris Raschka says of the playful volume. “That was my goal: do no harm to these poems, which are all beautiful. I wanted my illustrations to be little welcoming introductions—a way in.”
Chris Raschka once again teamed up with his A Poke in the I partner, Paul B. Janeczko, to bring an equally lauded creation to poets everywhere. A Kick in the Head: An Everyday Guide to Poetic Forms teaches readers the excitement and challenge that can be found in playing by the rules of poetry. Receiving starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, School Library Journal, and Booklist, the title seamlessly unites text and art. Chris Raschka’s whimsical torn-paper artwork lends thoughtful details to essence of the book—that poetry is fun.
Previously, Chris Raschka turned his talents to Dylan Thomas’s timeless prose poem A Child’s Christmas in Wales, creating fluid illustrations that honor the poet’s words, evoking their musical cadences and bringing a fresh appreciation for this most lyric work. Named a New York Times Book Review Best Illustrated Children’s Book, this beautiful edition “should bring Dylan Thomas’s work to a new generation of children,” says President Jimmy Carter.
The illustrator was also a force behind I Pledge Allegiance, a picture book cowritten by legendary children’s book author Bill Martin Jr. and fellow literacy expert Michael Sampson. “My parents have always respectfully refused to recite the Pledge of Allegiance,” Chris Raschka says. “That’s why I was drawn to this project—in America, we each have the freedom to choose, including the freedom to choose whether or not to say the pledge.” His aim was that his quirky images, with their simple, stylized line drawings, would “bring a sense of inclusion.” He says, “That is my hope, for everyone: to make the Pledge come alive.” A different sort of collaboration went into the tongue-in-cheek Table Manners, a hilarious picture book that Chris Raschka wrote and illustrated together with artist Vladimir Radunsky, a longtime friend.
Chris Raschka grew up in suburban Chicago, but then “fled to New York,” where he now lives with his wife, son, and a variety of pets. When not working on books, the artist likes to walk around the city, knit sweaters without a pattern, go to the opera, practice yoga, and surf, a pastime that once cost him a tooth.
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