Bobbi Katz
CALLING ALL KIDS! CALLING ALL TEACHERS & LIBRARIANS!Who will win this year's contest?How can elementary school students celebrate National Poetry Month and enter a contest where everyone wins? Start by reading Once Around the Sun! It's a year in poems with a poem for each month. And in each poem I try to capture the essence of an experience I had during a particular month that made a lasting impression on me. As our precious planet travels along its path through the year, what affects the things we see, taste, touch, and hear the most? Place! It's both our place on Earth and Earth's place in space relative to our star, the sun. My wonderful editor at Harcourt Books is a gifted matchmaker. She chose Le Uyen Pham to illustrate my poems. My editor explained that LeUyen's nickname is Uyen and is pronounced "you-win." I think "You-win" is a perfect name for her. She has captured the magic interplay between the sun and Earth and people with exuberant paintings that follow a particular boy all through the year. Uyen has won my appreciation.
The ContestI think EVERYONE is going to like this book, but the contest is only open to kids. Teachers and librarians, however, can use the contest as a way of inviting kids to focus on reading and writing, and they can help get students' work to me by January 15, 2010 at 82 Riverview, Port Ewen, NY 12466 by snail mail. No e-mail entries are eligible.
FIRST PRIZEMe! I will spend a day at the winning student's school or library, giving workshops, writing, and reading with students. My usual fee for a full day in a school is $1,200. I will not charge any fee, but I will need to have travel expenses paid. THE NEXT FIVE WINNERS will receive signed copies of one of my books. REMEMBER: Everyone who enters the contest will be a winner. You will be richer for capturing the ordinary with words. Like a miner who discovers a diamond, you will have something precious: a memory you will never lose.
GETTING STARTED: I'm inviting all students to read Once Around the Sun to get the feeling for how someone can write poems that express the spirit of a month. Then use your words to paint particular pictures. Begin to think of what you might remember about each month. Take time to reread and revise what you observe. Capture the spirit of the month you wish and try to make it so real that whoever reads it can share what you have chosen. I grew up in a little city along the Hudson River in New York State. Naturally, the choices in my world may be quite different than those of someone growing up in Arizona or Minnesota or Hawaii or wherever you are!
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Welcome
“Calling all young monster-wannabe's! If you want a blueprint for becoming Bluebeard or a crack at the Kraken, ghostwriter Bobbi Katz' memoir-in- rhyme THE MONSTEROLOGIST will provide you with the perfect job descriptions. Guaranteed to provide shivers and quivers (and giggles) galore!” – Mary Ann Hoberman, Children’s Poet Laureate, and author of A House is a House for Me “THE MONSTEROLOGIST (a.k.a. Bobbi Katz) clamps a verse reverse half-Nelson on each of her ghouls and pins them in seconds flat. Her poetremendous lines, paired with Adam McCauley’s trollishly clever illustrations, bring these beasties back from the dead and lock them in a room from which they will never escape—your imagination.” – J. Patrick Lewis, author of Please Bury Me in the Library “This book gives me the creeps! But that's a good thing, as Bobbi Katz brings monsters to life in this Who's Who of Monsterhood, from Grendel to the Golem, from Yeti to Kracken. And Adam McCauley's clever and audicious illustrations work hand-in-hand (or should that be claw-in-claw?) with the poems to create a match made in the nether world.” – Paul B. Janeczko, author of Hey, You! Poems to Skyscrapers, Mosquitoes, and Other Fun Things
Copyright c2004 by Bobbi Katz  Enjoy my interview with young Emma from Meet Me At The Corner as we sit down at Poet's House in New York City to discuss the world of poetry.
For more you information on Meet Me At The Corner and Poets House you can simply click here: Meet Me At The Corner Poets House Have you noticed how many people are reading, writing, and listening to poetry? Poetry Festivals featuring day after day of verse draw huge crowds. Why? Maybe we're so flooded by language, by endless sound-bites trying to sell everything from soap to politicians, that we're trying to give words new meaning. But imagine...
A Scarcity of Words What if words were suddenly endangered like cheetahs and pandas and elephants? What if words became scarce, the supply suddenly limited? Would people panic, hurrying to say things just to get them said or would they hoard their thoughts like misers? What if words were being used up so fast that they had to be rationed and you could only have a certain amount? Which fifty, which twenty, which ten words would you choose to recycle, respect, repeat, replay, write or say if words were suddenly endangered... and precious? Copyright c1995 by Bobbi Katz  Kids often ask me how a poem begins or where I get my ideas. Their questions gave me this answer.
Spider Work
I didn't mean to write a poem. A tingling starts a single spinneret I cast a line that may or may not rhyme but d a n g l e s trembling, beckoning me to weave a web of words: a poem to house my spiderling. Copyright c2006 by Bobbi Katz  Hafner c2003 Cat Kisses Sandpaper kisses on a cheek or chin- that is the way for a day to begin! Sandpaper kisses- a cuddle, a purr. I have an alarm clock that's covered with fur. Copyright c 1974 Bobbi Katz |
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