Finding Questions and Wonders with Jeannine Atkins

Winter Chickadee

Photo by Amy LV

Students - Today's poem came from my own wonders about migrating birds (How do they KNOW?) and from the birds we see in our yard each winter. Today I share a questioning nature poem - from Chickadee's point of view - in honor of our special guest, a poet I admire so deeply.

Jeannine Atkins

Photo from www.jeannineatkins.com

It is my absolute honor to welcome Jeannine Atkins, author of, among other books, BORROWED NAMES, LITTLE WOMAN IN BLUE, VIEWS FROM A WINDOW SEAT, and her latest...gorgeous...FINDING WONDERS.  Stay tuned for her forthcoming STONE MIRRORS (later this month) but today, please enjoy Jeannine's words about FINDING WONDERS, a book that has received stars from both Booklist and The Bulletin of the Center of Children's Books, a book that has been named a Book that Makes a Difference by The Horn Book, a book that has made me cry and cheer out loud.

I asked Jeannine, "Do you feel that you BECOME these girls when you write about them?"

She answered, Yes, there is some sense of channeling, of reading enough and getting the details till I feel like I have a special key.

Welcome, Jeannine!  Please tell us about this latest book.

Available at Your Local Bookshop

Finding Wonders is about three girls who were born in earlier centuries and whose lives focused on the close looking needed in science. Poems often begin with close looking, too. I want to see past words, which sometimes seem in the way, to what’s in front of my eyes.

A Room in the Queen’s Gallery in London

Honoring the Plants and tools Maria Merian Worked with 

after Sailing from Europe to South America in 1699

Photo by Jeannine Atkins

Maria Sibylla Merian grew up helping her stepfather in his studio and learning to paint. She loved the colors of butterflies, moths, and flowers, but she was even more fascinated to watch how a small animal changed, from a caterpillar or silkworm to a chrysalis or cocoon, then to a butterfly or moth. Maria Merian’s paintings had to be still, but sometimes she painted all the stages of a life in one picture.

Maria Sibylla Merian’s Work on Display

in the Queen’s Gallery in London

Photo by Jeannine Atkins

To write some poems, I also wanted to show these small creatures in motion. I watched videos of silkworms spinning sticky silk around themselves, and weeks later, breaking open the cocoon. I wrote metaphors comparing the spinning to dancing and twirling a spoon around a cake to frost it.

Can you watch an action, such as a caterpillar crawling up grass or a spider making a web? Try comparing the motion to something from your own life.

Writing about Mary Anning, the first person to make a living selling fossils, meant I had to imagine her life, back before there was a word for “dinosaur.” In my mind’s eye, I saw Mary walking down the beach, picking up what she called curiosities. These stones with an impression of plants or animals are what we call fossils. I wrote about the questions these stones might have raised in her mind.

Trilobites and Ammonites 

Such as those Mary Anning Collected

Photo by Jeannine Atkins

Choose a scientist from the past to write a poem about. What do you know now that she or he wouldn’t know then? Can you write a poem as a conversation between you and this scientist, speaking about something now known that wasn’t known long ago?

Thank you so much to Jeannine for joining us here this week...and we are even luckier still because Jeannine is offering a giveaway of one signed copy of her book to a commenter on this post.  The winner will be posted in this same space next Friday, January 13, so please leave your comment by Thursday evening, January 12.

For more about FINDING WONDERS, visit here:

Doraine Bennett's post at Dori Reads, November 18, 2016
Linda Mitchell's post at A Word Edgewise, January 6, 2016

Linda is hosting today's Poetry Friday roundup over at TeacherDance.  Head on over and join the poetry joy.  All are always welcome.

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