Major Poets and Awards: Florian: Poetrees by Douglas Florian

Poetrees by Douglas Florian   

Bibliography

Florian, Douglas. 2010. Poetrees. New York: Beach Lane Books.
ISBN:978-1-4169-8672-0

Review

Poetrees is a clever, informative, artistic book of poems about the diverse beauty of the life of a tree. Douglas Florian is an artist with both the brush and the tongue. Florian's book opens vertically creating an elongated treelike effect on the reader. Each page has a painting that is a visual representation of the poems meaning or topic. For example, on page one the first poem is appropriately titled "The Seed." The poem is short and the words are arranged in the shape of an infinity symbol to represent the cyclic nature of a trees and growth; in addition, there is an enlarged painting beneath the poem of the inside of a seed. The painting says as much as the poem itself. 

As the book progresses Florian dapples in different rhyme schemes and eloquently tinkers with different forms of poetry. On page 19 Florian uses the entire page to create a majestic piece of poetry about a Giant Sequoias. The poem takes on the AABB rhyme scheme; the line lengths range from two words to three words to four words per line that adds to the overall rhythm of the poem; finally a piece of art accompanies the poem transforming the words into a visual for the reader. For this particular poem Florain uses a combination of paint and clip art to create a Giant Sequoia. 

The word play throughout the book keeps a new reader laughing, smiling, and asking for more. As I read this particular book to a four year old he found the onamonapias and double meaning words in the "Bark" poem to be hilarious and wanted me to reread the poem as many times as I was going to allow. It was in his reaction that it became clear that this book is the perfect book to introduce the silly side of poetry. 

Keeping with the informative nature of Florian poetry books, the book caps off with a glossary of terms and trees used in the book. Because of this feature, I would utilize this book in an elementary science class before introducing the unit on tree cycles. 

Spotlight

The poem "Leaves" is a simple fun poem that ends with another perfect example of multiple meaning words. The poems simple descriptions of leaves makes the content reachable for new readers, but the word choice is still strong and rich.

Leaves

Lobed Leaves.
Oval Leaves.
Smooth leaves or jagged.
Heart-shaped.
Odd-Shaped.
Leaves eaten ragged.
Fan-like.
Light leaves.
Dark.
Leathery.
Feathery.
Leaves in a park.
Two points.
Ten points.
Points like a saw.
Lovely leaves.
Leave me in awe.

Follow-Up Lesson 

As I previously mentioned, I would use this book to introduce a science unit on the tree cycle and genetic variety because it generalizes the life of a tree and hints at the idea of genetic variety. I would model this poem after an investigation on leaves. I would have the young students collect and observe different leaves making sure they listed their different characteristics. Then I would read them "Leaves" and have them recreate the list form poem using the different descriptions they came up with in their observations. Having the students realize that science and reading can overlap in a meaningful way is a lesson that can make abstract poetry into something as concrete as science.