HELLO MY NAME IS - Day 3

  Happy National Poetry Month!

(Feel free to search for poems in the sidebar or watch videos in the tab above.)

Hello, Poetry Friends! This month I am sharing poems written in the voice of Little Red Riding Hood, and I invite you to join me in writing in the voice of someone else too. You might choose a fairy tale character or a book character or a person from history or anyone else real or imagined. These are your poems, so you make the decisions. Each April day, I will share my poem and a little bit about writing poetry. Mostly, we’ll just be writing in short lines with good words and not worrying about rhyming. Meaning first. Our focus this month will be adopting the perspective of another…for 30 days. I invite you to join me in this project! To do so, simply:

1. Choose a character from fiction or history or somewhere else in the world of space and time, and commit to writing a daily poem in this person's voice for the 30 days of April 2025. You might even choose an animal.

2. Write a new poem for each day of April. Feel free to print and find inspiration from this idea sheet that I will be writing from all month long.

Teachers, if you wish to share any HELLO MY NAME IS... subjects or poems, please email them to me at the contact button above. I would love to read what your students write and learn from how they approach their own projects.

LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD'S POEMS SO FAR

April 1 - First Poem

April 2 - My Name

And now for today!

Students - I am very much enjoying pretending to be Little Red Riding Hood so far. It feels as if each day I learn a little new about the LRRH (Lou) inside of me. To choose the poem topic for each day, I try to find a hint in the poem from the day before. If I do, I allow that hint to lead me into the next poem. Yesterday Lou wrote "But yes it's true, I do love red." This made me think about all of the red things she might adore. And somehow, I got to the tune of "My Favorite Things," the famous song from the movie THE SOUND OF MUSIC. 

Go ahead, sing today's poem to the tune of...

Raindrops on roses, and whiskers on kittens.

Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens.

....

If you don't wish to sing it, you can hear me do so above. 

Writing a poem to the tune of a song is one of my favorite writing things to do. The meter (and rhyme scheme if you wish) is offered by the song, and then you just sing along as you write to check if each line matches. Sometimes this requires a lot of crossing out and revision, as you can see below. 

Draft of "Red"

(Click to Enlarge)

Photo by Amy LV

I encourage you to try this. Choose a song, perhaps "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" or "Happy Birthday" and go from there. (And don't be surprised if I, as Little Red, lean on a song more than once this month!)

Looking at this draft, you may have noticed that I dated my page March 20, 2025. Because I am on the road a lot this month, I began writing in March so that I am able to travel, teach, and still post even on the busiest days.

Thank you to the students, faculty, administration and Librarian Christopher Gray of St. John's School in Houston Texas. I just spent two days there, sharing poems and writing poetry with all of the students in grades K-5. Much gratitude to retired teacher Olga McLaren, whose vision and generosity left a gift of a visiting poet to the school each year. It was so good to see her and her husband again!

And thank YOU for joining me for Day 3 of HELLO MY NAME IS...

To learn about more National Poetry Month projects and all kinds of April goodness, visit Jama's Alphabet Soup where Jama has generously gathered this coming month's Kidlitosphere poetry happenings. And if you are interested in learning about or writing from any of my previous 14 National Poetry Month projects, you can find them here. Happy National Poetry Month!

xo,

Amy

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