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.
