As a great lover of nature, I really appreciated the insect theme of this poetry book. Each poem was a surprisingly emotional journey through the life of the insect at hand. It is obvious that Fleischman put a lot of thought into each poem. I often forgot that I was reading the words of an insect that couldn't speak. These poems made it seem natural that a bee or a preying mantis would be able to tell me about their life. I found it entertaining, educational and believable.
Several of the poems really "spoke" to me. One of these was "Mayflies". It reminded me of a time when my fiance had purchased a new car, and decided to drive it up north to show to his friends. It was Mayfly mating season, and he ended up driving through a thick cloud of mating flies. They caked his windshield, the hood of his car and anything else they could adhere to. While I was reading this poem, I couldn't help but be a little perturbed with my fiance that he would kill these little mayflies when they only had a short time to live anyway. After reading this poem, I took a step back and laughed. I'd been empathizing with an insect! I think the poem certainly did its job in getting the reader (me) to see the world of insects from a totally different perspective.
What makes Joyful Noise so memorable is that it is, as it says on the cover, a book of "poems for two voices". The message and playfulness and joyful, sometimes serious nature of the poetry come across easily while reading it. The only flaw is that, as a piece of text, it is somewhat hard to gauge what the full "out-loud" effect would be. I can't help but wonder, would the message come across to me in the same way? Would hearing the poem make it mean something different to me than what I feel when reading it?
I think this book has a lot to offer adolescents. Joyful Noise is full of poems that are sure to spark an interest in their minds about the poetry genre. I think it is a great alternative to offer students so that they know that poetry isn't all sonnets and haikus. I think it is also important to point out that these poems offer an opportunity for students to participate in the taking of a different perspective, which seems to be a common struggle in secondary education. They could even do an exercise where they work in groups to come up with a poem to "add" to the collection. There is personal, group, literary and educational value in Fleischman's work and it would be a shame not to take advantage of all it has to offer.
I read this as part of my newberry goal (4 more!)and thought it was definitely something different for a newberry. I liked that is was a short read but still beautiful
ReplyDeleteI am glad you had such a connection with this book, NIkki! I love the story about you and your fiance. Although I did not appreciate this book as much as you, I can agree that there were a bunch of individual journeys this book took me on as a reader. I found the book to be informational as well! I am not an insect person at all, so it was a fun read in that sense.
ReplyDeleteI actually was wondering the same thing as you Nikki, would this text sound better or worse if two people read it aloud? Would it make me feel the same way? So I had my husband read a few out loud with me and it definitely had a different effect! I found it interesting to hear our voices together and that I wanted to stop and listen to him talk instead of hear myself talk.