Books

What’s so Big About Cleveland, Ohio is a picture book that I wrote a dozen years ago and I never thought it would have a life outside of (where else?) Cleveland, OH.  But as I have traveled to places like Marrakesh, Morocco, Shanghai, China, Seoul, Korea, Abu Dhabi, Jakarta, Indonesia, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and places closer to home like Houston, TX, Albany, NY and Betsy Lane, Kentucky I have met kids who have used my book as a model to write books about their own cities.

Is school turning you into a Zombie?  Are you tired of filling in boxes?  Do you long to find your individual voice?  This is the book that will help!  Poetry and writing tips for kids ages 9-12.

Writing prompts and mini poetry lessons throughout introduce readers to many of the elements of poetry and invite kids to write poems of their own.

YouTube Video…

Show the world that poetry was never meant to simply lie quietly on the page, any more than kids were meant to sit quietly in their seats to read it.

Kirkus Reviews: (starred) Guaranteed to get even confirmed classroom drones out of their seats and into an audience’s face, this high-energy manual is a poetry slam-dunk, combining plenty of easy practice pieces “The guinea pig has fleas, / there are grass stains on my knees, /AND IT’S ALL MY FAULT?” with pithy advice about voice, gesture, rhythm, and other aspects of solo, paired, and choral performance. Except for a closing note to adult “coordinators,” Holbrook (Walking on The Boundaries of Change: Poems of Transition, 1999) addresses young “jammers” directly, delivering a mix of practical tips and inspirational exhortation, inviting experimentation with the original examples she provides, emphasizing that attitude and technique are equally important, and finishing with suggested rules for poetry competitions.

Sometimes I don’t even know what my feelings are until I start to write about them. Each poem in this book defines a different feeling: Procrastination, Adreneline, and getting stuck in a Pout.

From School Library Journal: Grade 4-7-A wide range of emotions that preadolescents and young teens must cope with, such as anger, mistrust, disappointment, jealousy, honesty, and loneliness, are addressed in these 40 brief poems. About half can be found in collections previously published by Wordsong. For the most part, the selections deal lightly, often glibly, with these subjects. Sketchy, black-and-white cartoonlike illustrations match the upbeat tone and keep the material from becoming too weighty.

School Library Journal:  Gr 3-6-Typical childhood and adolescent miseries-having to wear glasses and braces; getting up early; embarrassing moments at school; losing at try-outs; forgetting things; coping with grown-ups, crushes, siblings-are the subjects of these 40 light verses, most of which are written in rhymed (sometimes forced) meter. Humorous pen-and-ink sketches accompany most of the selections. This collection is reminiscent of Judith Viorst’s If I Were in Charge of the World and Other Worries (Atheneum, 1981)

Poems for primary students about loosing a first tooth, T Ball, soccer and other topics.

School Library Journal: The poet’s inventive wordplay and bouncy rhythms give some of the short pieces a surprising punch, as in these two examples from Which Way: “The lightning show/is followed by/dramatic pause./The clouds applaud” and “I saw it all./Bird walk./Cat stalk./Pounce./Squawk./Close call.” Creative teachers might use these poems to show their students that poetry can be about the most mundane topics.

Teacher Christine Landaker: I am an eighth grade English teacher, and I’ve worked in both Florida and Massachusetts. In both places, and in other places where I have had the fortune to work with children, Sara’s poetry has captured their attention and wowed them with her understanding of their age. Her “silly rhymes” make them giggle and her “I am a teenager and my life is like this” poems make them jump for joy that someone knows what it is like to be in middle school (or elementary school, or high school). I have all of her books in my classroom, and have to replace them often because they are stolen: the highest compliment a student can make to a poet. I love Sara!

Teacher Daryl Anderson: Holbrook writes poetry for young people in the 10-15 age range. As a teacher of 6th graders, I think they are a ‘demographic group’ that sometimes must feel invisilble. Not for lack of being marketed-at and sold-to, though. Invisible because they are always being asked to don the personae of either “child” or “teenager”. Usually they are neither, and often they seem to find the cultural fit and expectations of these to be ill-matched to their inner lives. It is rare to find anything, books included, that fit comfortably. Holbrook’s work fits.

Poetry that pokes, prods and punches its way right to the heart of friendship. Celebrated performance poet Sara Holbrook shows readers that a good poem is like a good friend, “something to keep close, never lose, or leave behind at a bus stop.” This collection of forty-four poems explores the territory of friendship with a hard-edged honesty rare in children’s poetry. From schoolmates to teammates, pets to pests, Holbrook explores the heart—and the heartache—of friendship.

Set in 1954, this compelling historical novel tells the story of a young girl’s struggles and triumphs in the aftermath of World War II. The war is over, but the threat of communism and the Cold War loom over the United States. In Detroit, Michigan, twelve-year-old Marjorie Campbell struggles with the ups and downs of family life, dealing with her veteran father’s unpredictable outbursts, keeping her mother’s stash of banned library books a secret, and getting along with her new older “brother,” the teenager her family took in after his veteran father’s death. When a new girl from Germany transfers to Marjorie’s class, Marjorie finds herself torn between befriending Inga and pleasing her best friend, Bernadette, by writing in a slam book that spreads rumors about Inga. Marjorie seems to be confronting enemies everywhere—at school, at the library, in her neighborhood, and even in the news. In all this turmoil, Marjorie tries to find her own voice and figure out what is right and who the real enemies actually are. Includes an author’s note and bibliography.

With Co-Author Allan Wolf

School Library Journal: Grade 7 Up—Through a series of “he” and “she” poems, Holbrook and Wolf detail the range of emotions when a childhood friendship become a teenage romance. The relationship goes from shy uncertainty to blissful togetherness, dark rejection, and, finally, a return to friendship. Most of the poems are complementary and conversational, such as the excellent opening selections: “What to Do When She Looks at You?” and “What to Do When He Looks at You?” These deliciously readable poems, accessible and compact, bring to light recognizable feelings and use a variety of forms, including sonnets, free verse, luc bat, villanelle, tanka, and terza rima. An appendix briefly explains each form and refers to famous poems written in these styles.

Booklist:  In these parallel poems, a boy and a girl describe their progression from friendship to romance. First they are buddies, then they flirt, and the two speakers talk about their attraction, joy, denial, loneliness, and confusion in poems that appear side-by-side on the page. The simple language expresses strong feelings in a variety of poetic forms, including sonnet, villanelle, free verse, and tanka (the forms are explained in notes at the back). The boy and girl kiss and dream on their magic journey together, and there are surprises. They love each other, but they miss their friends, and they grow apart and become stressed, angry, depressed, and lonely. The climax is their angry argument, great for reading aloud. Then, of course, they reflect and apologize. Small black-and-white photos never get in the way of the words, which tell the edgy truth of romance in all its joy and confusion: “It isn’t you; it’s US I sometimes hate.”

Michael White (father, teacher): Sara Holbrook’s I Never Said I Wasn’t Difficult is one of those rare books that draws in the younger reader. The poems touch the heart of many a school kid. They talk about the types of circumstances that occur in young people’s lives. For example, “The Storm That Was” is a perfect example of needing a person to vent your frustrations to. “I rolled in like a storm” and vented. But since you listened, “the storm… it blew away.” Of course the “I hate” lines throughout the poem really connect with school kids. “Wrong” touches on the concept that kids hate being wrong during an argument with their parents. “What’s worse than being wrong is… / maybe / you were right.” Again, this collection of poems, from the ones mentioned above to “A Step,” a poem about the possible first kiss (or more), to “Private Property,” a poem about the sanctity of the body, to the touching last four lines of one of my personal favorites, “Scream Bloody Murder,” there is a lesson to be learned that a child/teenager can connect with and understand.

The book is also a wonder for all ages. When parents lose control or just don’t quite understand what their child is going through, maybe don’t remember what it was like to be school students with peer pressure and problems, that’s where this book also shines. If the parents read it, it will bring back memories of the way it was when “they were young,” and not the fabricated idea of perfection that they may have in their minds, but the true memories of a disturbing time in their history. Sara Holbrook’s poetry can do just that, and then maybe parents will understand their children just a little bit more.

In conclusion, this book not only helps children understand the problems they are going through, but it also helps parents remember those same problems. They can help their children survive the most awkward years of life.

Kristin Seay:  Great book for middle school students! This book touches on so many thoughts, feelings, and states of mind that teens are experiencing.

Daryl Anderson(teacher): added this and a few others of Sara Holbrook’s works to a 6th grade classroom poetry library. The youngsters gobbled up her works. I was delighted.

But teachers aren’t the only ones looking to help young people connect feelings and writing. I’m also a parent of children in the 8-15 range and I’m alert to ways to provide other channels for my kids’ explorations of inner and outer life. These books are great for that as well.

The 50-odd poems in this slim collection are roughly centered around the wide range of life changes that young people today face, often alone. But there’s nothing like a voice describing what you feel to help you think about it while feeling it. These poems all work at that level.

As a writing teacher, I enjoyed the opportunity to move these younger pre-teens to look at poetry beyond the Shel Silverstein style. Many kids that age have decided that poetry is only fun, silly, “rhymin’ Simon’ stuff, as I called it. I think the best way to connect them to un-rhymed verse is through powerful themes. Holbrook accomplishes this. She sometimes sneaks in subtle rhyme, and even includes a sonnet or two, but mostly her emphasis is on feelings and words to express them… a place you might hope your writer(s) will explore.

Some of the themes are probably more appropriate for 8th-10th graders rather than 5th-7th, and some of them revolve around urban lifestyles that my primarily rural students did not connect with. Like any good collection there will be something for everyone here; and even if issues of sexuality and gangs are not a part of the kids lives, I’d rather have them explore these issues in poetry than on MTV!

(Heinemann Publishers)

Any teacher who has challenged a sunny day with the phrase “vocabulary lesson” only to see a dark cloud descend over the room knows that students can be downright word resistant. Break out of the vocab doldrums once and for all with High Definition, a whole new approach to vocabulary instruction that’s not just effective, but energizing, sociable, and fun.

When kids envision a word as if it were a real person, with a unique voice and personality, they forever imprint the meaning of the word into their memories. Vocabulary lessons become anything but dull, and still blend seamlessly into your writing objectives. Veteran teacher-authors Sara Holbrook and Michael Salinger offer a powerful formula for getting even the most reluctant kids into the act:

Well-chosen Words + Collaborative Discussion + Genre Writing + Performance = Strong Vocabulary

Students are first given a choice of vocabulary words, then collaborate with their peers in small- group brainstorming discussions that lead to writing exercises in a variety of genres. Finally they share their work aloud, building community and understanding throughout the classroom.

Everything you need to put High Definition into action is included:

• Sample word lists give you an immediate starting place for choosing vocabulary words
• Collaboration Cheat Sheets offer instant pre-write organizational help
• Clear explanations of each genre include ways you can build on what kids already know in their lives
• Student samples throughout provide inspiring examples of how students take the definition of words way beyond what’s offered in dictionaries
• Lesson Process Plans show you how to use writing, collaboration, and performance across genres and content areas.

Help your kids build strong and lively vocabularies. Teach with High Definition and discover how to make words unforgettable.

(Heinemann Publishers)

In Outspoken! poet–educators Sara Holbrook and Michael Salinger take you through the process of developing, implementing, and assessing poetry performance—and beyond. Beginning with ideas for encouraging even the most reluctant students to speak clearly and write from the heart, this handbook uses familiar workshop structures to guide young poets toward vibrant completed pieces and an exciting, dynamic delivery. With lessons involving memoir, metaphor, character, point of view, and articulation, you’ll find a fully realized unit that’s as enjoyable to teach as it is to learn and that’s full of specific advice on assessing the writing, speaking, performing, and learning of your students.

Holbrook and Salinger also go outside the classroom, providing ideas and guidelines for running a poetry slam in your school, conducting a poetry performance series, and bringing in a visiting poet. In addition, Outspoken! comes with a DVD that contains Outspoken: Playhouse Square Center’s Slam-U Program, a documentary that chronicles Salinger and his students as they prepare to compete in a national poetry slam, demonstrating what student performance poetry looks like up close and the positive effect it has on students’ lives and learning.

Fun, practical, conversational, and full of innovations sure to enliven any class or school, Outspoken! will become an instant hit with your students—and with your curriculum supervisor.

(Heinemann Publishers)

This book is a gift for our teaching heads and our teaching hearts.
—Janet Allen

In Practical Poetry, Sara Holbrook shows you how the precise language and keen observations of poems can be used as nuts-and-bolts tools for addressing content and language standards in four key subject areas. Whether you teach one or several subjects, Practical Poetry includes chapters specially written to show you how to promote content understanding and meaning-making in language arts, math, science, and social studies by taking poems out of the artsy ether and making them functional. Even if you aren’t a poet, you’ll be ready to use poetry in your class tomorrow because each of Holbrook’s lessons:

• describes the rationale for how and why the lessons work
• identifies the specific content standards you’ll be addressing in your teaching
• includes exemplar poems to use right away or to guide you in weaving favorite poems into your lesson planning
• provides examples of student work from classrooms where poetry has been used successfully as a vehicle for learning.

You might think you don’t have room in your standards-based curriculum to teach with poems, but with applications to content standards woven throughout, Practical Poetry will prove that you do. Take Sara Holbrook’s advice. You’ll energize your students, reinforce their topical understanding over a variety of content-area standards, and build their critical-thinking and language skills. Poetry has never been so practical.

20 PROJECTABLE Lessons for Building Literacy Across Content Areas (Corwin Literacy)  Use poems as mini lessons to teach and evaluate students understanding of literacy skills and content area knowledge. Over 600 projectable slides (on DVD) to use in your classroom.

“Leave it to Sara Holbrook and Michael Salinger to come up with a resource that allows kids to be the diverse group of individuals they can and want to be—and at the same time paves a route for them to meet the CCSS…I really wish I had written this resource.”

“Is poetry relevant in this era of the Common Core?  Absolutely! Anyone who doubts this needs to pick up this remarkable book by Sara and Michael, who show students (and their teachers) the power of imagination and observation, even as they read closely and work to meet the standards.

(Cleveland State University Publishers)

Poems

“Sara Holbrook continually works miracles by giving substance to steam — in these keepsake poems she is matriarch, mojo and mind-bender, guiding us toward insight with an unerring hindsight.

It is not important whether you discover Sara through her electrifying performance work or through these gems of humor, heart and lyricism. What’s important is that you discover her, this wondrous wordsmith, one of the reasons poetry has a pulse again.”

– Patricia Smith, Boston Globe Columnist, Four Time National Poetry Slam Champion

(Collinwood Publishers)

Poetry. Prose. “Sara Holbrook’s book is like a Japanese fan unfolding-with bound-breaking poems and essays, we watch the picture form before us of a poet’s life; of lessons taught, and lessons learned. There is a tough sweetness, or a sweet toughness, to these stories, that allows us a personal and poetic look into a world that is both private and universal”-Sarah Willis. ISN’T SHE LADYLIKE? combines poetry with black and white snapshots from the childhood of the noted performance poet and author the poetry collection Chicks Up Front. Sara Holbrook has also written eight books for children and teens.