Tag Archives: Laura Purdie Salas

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Flurry, Float and Fly! The Story of a Snowstorm

I was delighted to have a chance to share Laura Purdie Salas’s upcoming “Flurry, Float and Fly! The Story of a Snowstorm” with my second grade students recently. As Maine residents, we’re all well-versed in snow, so would they be the perfect audience for a snowy book or a snow-jaded lot?

As we settled in to read, the book quickly grabbed their attention. It is a gorgeous match between words and images. The rhyming was so well-crafted, that it took them a while to notice it, and they were delighted when they did. It really is masterfully done! Here’s the jet stream described oh-so-efficiently and oh-so-poetically:
“From the north,
a polar freeze…

from the south,
a humid breeze…

All winds advance.
The mix and dance. “

The kids oohed and aahed over several of the spreads, including this one:

illustration by Chiara Fedele

“The words go down, down, down….Just like snow!” one student gushed. On another spread, they loved how Laura spaced her words across the page and greatly admired her use of ellipses ( a favorite second grade form of punctuation!). On other pages students noticed how Laura used larger font and capitals to make words pop out. By the end of the book, my students were chanting along with the refrain, “flurry, float and fly.”

As we discussed the book, they asked me to turn back to this next page again and again. It captures the magic of early morning snow and the arrangement of words and those lovely ellipses invite you to linger…to slow down and just take it all in.

As a bonus, there are several pages of back matter to dig into. In them, the science of snow is beautifully and clearly articulated, with explanations of the jet stream and snowflake formation and well-chosen illustrations. We didn’t have a chance to dig into these pages yet, but I’m already thinking how I will use them to model some powerful non-fiction reading and thinking.

Most of all, my students fell into the wonder of the book and its snowstorm. As Laura noted, “I know that science underpins its beauty, but it’s still magic, falling silently, gracefully, from the sky.” My students agreed, and there wasn’t a jaded one among them! Laura’s words and Chiara’s illustrations wove a spell of a beautiful snowfall on a very warm fall day. My active semi-chaotic class was lulled by Laura and Chiara’s collaboration into a temporarily peaceful state.

Perhaps I’ll read it again tomorrow!

Note: It’s due for release on November 11th, so you will also have the chance to enjoy it soon!

An additional side note: If you haven’t ever had a chance to read Laura’s book, Finding Family: The Duckling Raised by Loons, I highly recommend that you do! Published in 2023, it’s already become a a must read in my classroom. Kids are fascinated by the story and it sparks some wonderful discussions about family.

This week’s Poetry Friday Roundup is hosted by Sarah Grace Tuttle!

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NPM: Playing Along

It’s been an intense week or so for me. I’ve been immersed in life stuff rather than writing stuff and that has directly impacted how much I’ve written. Ah, well. At any rate, I’m dipping my toes into the NPM water again with another response to Laura Purdie Salas’s NPM project. Today she posted her five possible topics: East, West, South, North, Compass Directions and a pool of words to work with.

Two very different poems emerged from my notebook scribbling. For both poems I took liberties by not requiring all words in the title to be in topic or in the word pool. A very short poem first:

In all directions

delirious blue sky
crushes finite

©Molly Hogan

And then a poem in which I took the license of repeating one of the word choices, though I’m not sure that’s “allowed”. I’m quickly realizing that the beauty of playing someone else’s “game” is that the rules feel more flexible! :

It’s all heading South

Go away, frantic fears–
hot mist monkeys
playing in my mind!
Go! Go! Go!

©Molly Hogan

I am totally fascinated by the idea of hot mist monkeys, but please remember, not all poems are autobiographical. 😉

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National Poetry Month Begins!

Today marks the beginning of National Poetry Month. Each year I toy with the idea of participating, but I’ve always found it hard to commit after the demands of daily writing in March with the TWT Slice of Life Challenge. This year Margaret Simon and I came up with a very flexible plan for the month. We created a grid of 30 blocks and wrote a poetry form or choice in each one. I’m trying to view it not so much as a plan as a planlette. My focus is on being flexible, low stakes and fun. We used a calendar grid, but there are no dates (although I will admit, the ultimate goal is to check each box at some point during the month). Still, there’s no order and no expectation. I’m trying to think of it as a playground of possibility, not an overwhelming to-do list. You are invited to play along if you’d like. Here it is, all prettified by Margaret.

For my first choice I decided to go over to Laura Purdie Salas’s NPM project. Since I already mentioned playgrounds, this feels like a fitting place to begin. In a nutshell, Laura’s providing 5 topic choices and an array of magnetic words to work with. She’s aptly named it “Digging for Poems.” When I first read about her project, I commented, “I feel like you just opened a new playground and invited everyone in to play with you!”

Again, that’s my lens for the month. Play. Low stakes. Fun. We’ll see if I can keep that lens in place…

Here are two quick responses to Laura’s prompt for today:

Baby

Soft chick.
Finger.
Yummy?
BITE!
“No!!!!”

Wisdom

behind cover of smoke
soft pink glow
break on through

Wishing you a month filled with noticing and wondering about the poetry hidden in your everyday moments. As Naomi Shahib Nye writes so eloquently in “A Valentine for Ernest Mann”,

“So I’ll tell a secret instead:
poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes,
they are sleeping. They are the shadows
drifting across our ceilings the moment 
before we wake up. What we have to do
is live in a way that lets us find them.”

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PF: To Prepare for Winter…

downloadIt’s that time of the year when finding time for writing is harder than ever. The demands of school leak into other parts of the day, and my reserved writing time can easily slip slide away before I even notice. These days I am especially grateful when a prompt or challenge sparks a response. I wrote this one to Laura Purdie Salas’s prompt for her “Snack, Snooze, Skedaddle!” give-away. I didn’t win the give-away, but having written something was a welcome consolation prize. 🙂

To prepare for winter…

I snap some photos
of blazing maples,
then sweep the leaves
from my mind,
wipe away dew-laden webs,
prepare to focus on lacy frost,
misty clouds of breath,
the glory of the first
snowfall.

©Molly Hogan, 2019

The Poetry Friday Roundup this week is hosted by the ever-gracious Linda B. at her blog, Teacher Dance. She’s revealing the cover of a new book by Irene Latham and Charles Waters that will be coming out in February. Take a peek! It looks wonderful!