Michelle Barnes
The Best of Today's Little Ditty: 2014-2015
language
(Igoo Island Press Nov. 15, 2016)
Today’s Little Ditty is more than a children’s poetry blog, it’s a poetry playground. Each month, a vibrant community of writers, teachers, librarians, and poetry-appreciators gathers to take part in the Ditty of the Month Club (DMC). Writing to prompts by successful authors and editors, they participate for the camaraderie, and for the joy and craft of writing poetry.
In THE BEST OF TODAY'S LITTLE DITTY, 2014-2015, thirteen “ditty” challenges by contemporary children’s authors, including Nikki Grimes, Lee Bennett Hopkins, J. Patrick Lewis, Joyce Sidman, Margarita Engle, Kwame Alexander, and others, have inspired these 75 poems, deemed “best” by their peers. They range from lighthearted to thought-provoking and appeal to a wide audience, from children to adults. Join the fun at michellehbarnes.blogspot.com.
What people are saying about Today’s Little Ditty and the Ditty of the Month Club:
“ ‘Poetry is prose, bent out of shape,’ I like to say, and for proof, you need only connect with Michelle Heidenrich Barnes’s Ditty of the Month Club, where children’s poets are busy flexing their poetic muscles through the use of various verse forms. They are not showing off; they’re practicing. And they invite you to do the same.”
— J. Patrick Lewis, former U.S. Children’s Poet Laureate (2011-2013) and recipient of the NCTE Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children
“The Ditty of the Month Club . . . gives my students a way to participate and be celebrated as practicing poets.”
— Margaret G. Simon, teacher of gifted studies and recipient of the 2014 NCTE Donald H. Graves Award for Excellence in the Teaching of Writing
"Today's Little Ditty is an amazing resource in the blogging community of poetry for young people with more than 500 posts that invite us to learn, try, pause, write, celebrate, read, think, and revel in poetry and all it has to offer us in our uber-busy lives.”
— Dr. Sylvia Vardell, professor of children’s literature at Texas Woman’s University and recipient of the 2014 Scholastic Library Publishing Award for her work in the field