This week I read Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai. The book is based on her own life story of coming to America from Vietnam. The verse was simple, yet moving. In a verse novel, each chapter/verse/poem should stand alone yet hold the whole together. Lai does this. The novel made me think about 1975 when refugees were coming in to my own city. I don’t remember how I reacted. I hope I was kind. Not everyone in Lai’s book is kind. Our students can learn from Lai that not everyone looks the same or speaks the same, but everyone should be kind.
Wet and Crying
My biggest papaya
is light yellow,
still flecked with green.Brother Vu wants
to cut it down,
saying it’s better than
letting the Communists have it.Mother says yellow papaya
tastes lovely
dipped in chili salt.
You children should eat
fresh fruit
while you can.Brother Vu chops;
the head falls;
a silver blade slices.Black seeds spill
like clusters of eyes,
wet and crying.–Thanhha Lai from Inside Out & Back Again
Last year during Teachers Write camp (which, by the way, begins Monday), Gae Polisner had Caroline Starr Rose, author of May B, as a guest on her Friday Feedback blog post. I was turned on to writing in verse. I have a WIP (Work in Progress) that hasn’t gone anywhere in years, and by turning to verse, I was able to revive it. I am attracted to this genre because it’s a way to combine my love of poetry and writing for children. Here’s a sample verse from my WIP Dear God:
.
Dear God,
Winter can be so boring,
short days, long nights.
But today, snow fell
for hours.
No school.
I watched the snow from the window,
picture perfect,
piling onto the bare tree branches,
sparkling, gleaming.
Benjie and I bundled up,
headed over to the hill by the park.
Neighborhood kids were there with sleds
and makeshift sleds of cardboard.
I helped Benjie climb onto the sled and pushed him off,
down the hill, twenty times at least.
When we finally headed home,
my nose and fingertips were frozen solid.
Mom made us hot chocolate and vegetable soup.
Simone could not play in the snow.
When we passed by, she waved at us from her window seat.
She wore a knit cap and a scarf around her neck,
looking like a snowman herself, pale and hairless.
She wasn’t sad, though.
Her smile was big and sparkled like the snow.
I love verse novels. Inside Out and Back Again has been on my TBR list for a year or so, reading “Wet and Crying” makes me want to hunt it down when I’m at the library this week. The ending of your poem surprised me. I want to know more about Simone– can’t wait until your novel is published.
Congratulations on reviving your WIP! You mentioned some of my favorite novels in verse, but I haven’t read “Inside Out and Back Again.” It looks great — my parents spent some time living in the far east and I’d like to know more about that culture.
“Inside Out and Back Again” is an important book. We have many refugees in our school community, and kids need to understand how hard it is for them and how far kind words and understanding go…and also how hurtful thoughtlessness can be…
Can’t wait to read your WIP!!
I LOVED this book! Even though the protagonist was a little young, I used it with my seventh graders and they liked it quite a bit.
I used the book with a study group about immigration, Margaret. A beauty of a story, from ‘there’ to ‘here’. I loved your poem, too, at first a delight of a memory, then the turning of looking at other lives-poignant. Thanks!
So glad your WIP has gotten new life in a new form. Both of the poems you shared today told a lot about their respective settings. Well done.
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