I love, love, love watching children learn to read--and the next bext thing to watching it happen is reading about it on some of my favorite blogs. So here's a Friday poem in honor of Ella and Muffin Man. It's "The First Book," by Rita Dove:
Open it.
Go ahead, it won't bite.
Well...maybe a little.
More a nip, like. A tingle.
It's pleasurable, really.
You see, it keeps on opening.
You may fall in.
Sure, it's hard to get started;
remember learing to use
knife and fork? Dig in:
You'll never read the bottom.
It's not like it's the end of the world--
just the world as you think
you know it.
May Ella, Muffin Man, and all the young readers out there (like Suzoz's Olle) find a lifetime of pleasure in words.
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3 comments:
That's beautiful.
Thanks! I love that poem too. It's in that Poetry Speaks to Children collection I was talking about a while back, too.
Fabulous poem. I love Rita Dove -- read her "Thomas and Beulah" in college, and was thrilled a couple years later when she was named poet laureate. (Did you ever see her on Sesame Street, when Big Bird thought she was the poet, Laurie Ett?)
I have to get a copy of Poetry Speaks to Children.
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