Book Report # 3

Deborah Farley-Opsal

OWP Summer '01

Book Review: The Whole Word Catalogue 2

By: Bill Zavatsky and Ron Padgett

This book has many interesting topics, including a section on teaching poetry, writing ideas or "gimmicks," letters and dialogues, writing from observation, writing and literature, drama, film, video, music, art and publication, studying society, handle with tender, loving care, and inside school and out.

The more I browsed through this book, the more I liked it. It had something for every teacher, new or experienced.

As the author said in the introduction on how to use the book, leaf through it, read it on the bus, before you go to bed at night, begin at the beginning and read to the end, or begin at the last page and work back to the introduction. And indeed, that is a great way to use this book. There are many intriguing topics and ideas to digest.

Everything you always wanted to know about poetry; the first chapter.

"As a teacher presenting a poem to students for the first time, one must be humble and curious. The humility comes in the intentional holding back of one's own interpretation of the poem at hand and realizing that the poem can never be completely understood."

Zsvatsky says further, that to hunt for the symbol means the death of poetry. I like his way of tackling instruction of poetry. I always enjoyed playing around with poetry as a kid, but I know that many students moan loudly when told they are going to study poetry.

I like his discussion and demonstration on how to involve a class in the pre-teaching of poetry, and his many examples of students' discussions demonstrate how easy it is to get kids actively involved in the process. Another reflection is that "a teacher's calm confidence that a child will come up with an idea, is often more reassuring than tricky ideas invented by teachers.'

I also like that this book gives many of the children's examples of the writing that they produced, and he has used a lot of the student's comments or responses to ideas, discussions, or viewpoints. This makes it easy to read and to hear the voice of the students makes it real to me as a teacher; I can hear my own student's voices coming through the exercises.

This would be a wonderful addition to my teacher materials and resources. There are not many books that I really refer to frequently, but this would be one.