ISBN 152163972
$16.00 US
Harcourt Books
April 2006

Please remember my poems are my property. Enjoy them but do not reprint them for other than classroom use.

Thank you

Once Around the Sun

These poems are autobiographical. I spun them from deeply imbedded, but clear, memories of my own experiences and feelings from when I was an elementary school child. And even now, so many years after I've been out of school, and even college, the year seems to start in "when yellow pencils /​ in brand-new eraser hats /​ bravely wait on perfect points."

My year in poems, one for each month it takes Earth to circle our star, the sun. LeUyen Pham illustrated my poems with a gorgeous interplay of changing sunlight and starlight as a background for a boy, his family, and his friends. Each month has its own speical images for each person. I hope this collection will help every reader or listener to recall his or her own memories of a particular month. And maybe those memories will become poems, too.

June

June is
  when your math book
is completely lopsided:
   the pile of unfinished pages on the right
   is
   skinny
but you need to use your left hand to hold down
all the stuff you've already learned.
  And
  June is
   when the gentlest rustle
    of a leaf outside the window
can drown out your teacher's voice
 and
every word on the spelling test spells:
S-U-M-M-E-R V-A-C-A-T-I-O-N!


From Once Around the Sun by Bobbi Katz and illustrated by LeUyen Pham, coming from Harcourt 2006.
All rights reserved.

Selected Works

Poetry
illustrated by Carin Berger; Greenwillow/Harper Collins 2007
illustrated by LeUyen Pham; Harcourt Books 2006
illustrated by Marilyn Hafner; Dutton March 2004
illustrated by Susan Estelle Kwas; Dutton 2001
illustrated by Nina Crews; Greenwillow/Harper Collins 2000
illustrated by Joung Un Kim; Mondo Publishing 1997
illustrated by Steve Bjorkman; Scholastic 1996
Prose
Selected by Deak and Litchman; HarperCollins 2003
Professional Books
Scholastic Professional Books 2006
Scholastic Professional Books 2000