MODULE 4: POETRY ACROSS THE CURRICULUM


SCIENCE POETRY

Singer, Marilyn & Ed Young. A Strange Place to Call Home: The World’s Most Dangerous Habitats & the Animals That Call Them Home. San Francisco, California. Chronicle Books LLC. 2012. 

ISBN: 978-1-4521-0120-0

A Strange Place to Call Home: The World’s Most Dangerous Habitats & the Animals That Call Them Home is a wonderful book for children to learn about fourteen animals who beat the odds of survival by adapting to unusual habitats.

Children will enjoy reading about these amazing animals due in part to the various poetic forms contained in the book. Free verse, triolet, and sonnet are just a few of the forms Marilyn Singer uses. The haiku, “Dry As Dust,” will have the reader imagining what it would look like to have an explosion of toads hopping around. The other poems contained in the book will appeal to the reader’s imagination and will leave readers curious about other animals which have made unusual adaptations. The language Singer uses presents the information in a manner which will appeal to the reader and reinforces the overall purpose of the book which is to make the reader aware of the unusual habitats of some animals.

All of the poems in the book are written by Marilyn Singer who is a renowned poet. The illustrations by Ed Young, who is a Caldecott Medalist, are reminiscent of paper collages which portray the animals in their unusual habitats. The illustrations will capture the interest of the reader as much as the poems will. Endnotes at the end of the book give more detailed information about the animals which makes this book a good resource for teachers.

SPOTLIGHT POEM

A Strange Place To Call Home

Where it’s dark

Where it’s deep

Where it’s stormy

Where it’s steep

Where the rain rarely falls

            or the water always races

They survive

              strive to thrive

                        in a world of risky places.

This poem is actually found on the back cover of this book and not inside the book. I would begin a lesson on habitats of animals with this poem. Discuss with the children what kind of animals might live in the type of places described in the poem. We would then read and discuss the animals from the poems. As a follow up activity, I would put the students in small groups and have them research an animal’s habitat and behaviors. The students would create a Popplet to organize the information from their research.