A Blog of Seattle Arts & Lectures
By Kathleen Flenniken, WITS Writer-in-Residence Andrea Davis Pinkney has written a moving and imaginative story-in-poems for middle grade readers called The Red Pencil (Little Brown, 2014). The Red Pencil is a Global Reading Challenge selection this year and currently available as an audiobook to all Seattle Public Library cardholders until March 19. Amira is twelve […]
By Kathleen Flenniken, WITS Writer-in-Residence This fall, I’ve been teaching poetry to fourth graders at View Ridge Elementary in Seattle. Each week before I share the poem that will be our mentor text, I show my students a photograph of the poet and offer a few words about the poet’s concerns, life, and times. In […]
By Kathleen Flenniken, WITS Writer-in-Residence A friend of a friend was looking for a poem her fifth-grade son could memorize for a class project. The question came to me and I made a couple of suggestions. The boy chose “Eating Poetry” by Mark Strand. His mother sent a photo of him studying the poem with […]
By Kathleen Flenniken, WITS Writer-in-Residence One of the most important attributes of art, and especially poetry, is the way it opens a door into another person’s life experience. A poem—a mere few lines sometimes—can create a more empathetic reader for life. My fourth grade students at View Ridge Elementary had the chance to “pretend” to […]