There are only a few weeks left to write your poem and enter it in the Library's 6th Teen Poetry Contest.
Deadline to enter is
midnight April 30.
April is National Poetry Month.
Celebrate poetry by reading a verse novel.You'll find them shelved in Young Adult fiction.There is a sticker on the book's spine. It looks like this:
Twenty-one Verse Novels
Booked, by Kwame Alexander, 2016. Nick Hall is the star player on the soccer team until a bombshell announcement shatters his world.
The Crossover, by Kwame Alexander, 2014. Fourteen-year-old twin basketball stars Josh and Jordan wrestle with highs and lows on and off the court as their father ignores his declining health. Awarded the Newbery Medal in 2015.
Psyche in a Dress, by Francesca Lia Block, 2006. A young woman, Psyche, searches for her lost love and questions her true self in a modern retelling of Greek myths.
Ringside, 1925: Views From the Scopes Trial, by Jen Bryant, 2008. Visitors, spectators, and residents of Dayton, Tennessee, in 1925 describe, in a series of free-verse poems, the Scopes "monkey trial" and its effects on that small town and its citizens.
Freakboy, by Kristin Clark, 2013. Told from three viewpoints, seventeen-year-old Brendan, a wrestler, struggles to come to terms with his place on the transgender spectrum while Vanessa, the girl he loves, and Angel, a transgender acquaintance, try to help.
One, by Sarah Crossan, 2015. Despite problems at home, 16-year-old conjoined twins Tippi and Grace are loving going to school for the first time and making real friends when they learn that a cardiac problem will force them to have separation surgery, which they have never before considered.
Tropical Secrets: Holocaust Refugees in Cuba, by Margarita Engle, 2009. Escaping from Nazi Germany to Cuba in 1939, a young Jewish refugee dreams of finding his parents again, befriends a local girl with painful secrets of her own, and discovers that the Nazi darkness is never far away.
Hidden, by Helen Frost, 2011. When 14-year-olds Wren and Darra meet at a Michigan summer camp, both are overwhelmed by memories from six years earlier when Darra's father stole a car, unaware that Wren was hiding in the back.
Wicked Girls: A Novel of the Salem Witch Trials, by Stephanie Hemphill, 2010. A fictionalized account, told in verse, of the Salem witch trials, told from the perspective of three of the real young women living in Salem in 1692--Mercy Lewis, Margaret Walcott, and Ann Putnam, Jr.
Out of the Dust, by Karen Hesse, 1997. In a series of poems, 14-year-old Billie Jo relates the hardships of living on her family's wheat farm in Oklahoma during the dust bowl years of the Depression.
Crank, by
Ellen Hopkins, 2004. Kristina Snow is the perfect daughter, but she meets a boy who introduces her to drugs and becomes a very different person, struggling to control her life and her mind.
My Book of Life by Angel, by Martine Leavitt, 2012. Angel, a 16-year-old girl working the streets of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, befriends Melli, an 11-year-old girl in the same situation and realizes she must do all that she can to save Melli and perhaps save herself at the same time.
The Realm of Possibility, by David Levithan, 2004. A variety of students at the same high school describe their ideas, experiences, and relationships in a series of interconnected free verse stories.
Up From the Sea, by Leza Lowitz, 2016. A novel in verse about the March 2011 tsunami that sent Japan into chaos, told from the point-of-view of Kai, a biracial teenaged boy.
October Mourning: A Song for Matthew Shepard, by Leslea Newman, 2012. Relates, from various points of view, events from the night of October 6, 1998, when 21-year-old Matthew Shepard, a gay college student, was lured out of a Wyoming bar, savagely beaten, tied to a fence, and left to die.
One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies, by Sonya Sones, 2004. Fifteen-year-old Ruby Milliken leaves her best friend, her boyfriend, her aunt, and her mother's grave in Boston and reluctantly flies to Los Angeles to live with her father, a famous movie star who divorced her mother before Ruby was born.
The Language Inside, by Holly Thompson, 2013. Raised in Japan, American-born tenth-grader Emma is disconcerted by a move to Massachusetts for her mother's breast cancer treatment, because half of Emma's heart remains with her friends recovering from the tsunami.
Orchards, by Holly Thompson, 2011. Sent to Japan for the summer after an eighth-grade classmate's suicide, half-Japanese, half-Jewish Kana Goldberg tries to fit in with relatives she barely knows and reflects on the guilt she feels over the tragedy back home.
Love and Leftovers, by Sarah Tregay, 2011. When her father starts dating a man, 15-year-old Marcie's depressed mother takes her to New Hampshire but just as Marcie starts falling for a great guy her father brings her back to Iowa, where all of her relationships have become strained.
A Time to Dance, by Padma Venkatraman, 2014. In India, a girl who excels at Bharatanatyam dance refuses to give up after losing a leg in an accident.
The Watch That Ends the Night: Voices From the Titanic, by Allan Wolf, 2011. Recreates the1912 sinking of the Titanic as observed by millionaire John Jacob Astor, a beautiful young Lebanese refugee finding first love, "Unsinkable" Molly Brown, Captain Smith, and others including the iceberg itself.
April is National Poetry Month. Celebrate by creating your own blackout poem and sharing it with others on our teen bulletin board. It's easy: choose a page (from damaged books) from the box; read it over; decide on a theme; circle your chosen words and blackout the rest. Create something new from something old. For inspiration watch Austin Kleon's TED talk "Steal Like An Artist." It's a creative manifesto based on 10 things he wished he'd heard when he was starting out. Austin is the author of Newspaper Blackout, a book of poetry made by redacting newspaper articles with a permanent marker. Click this link to find Austin's book, Steal Like An Artist, in our catalog.
