Firefly July: A Year of Very Short Poems

 

    Firefly July: A Year of Very Short Poems is a book of poems written by various authors. The book contains four different themes, Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter. Each poem is based on the topic of the theme. The book is an anthology of poems from familiar poets such as Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost. The book contains a table of contents. Each poem that is named is listed by the title of the poem and those that are not the first part of the first line. At the end of the book are acknowledgments for the poems used. The poems are about familiar topics such as snow, fog, and other things that are specific to the seasons. There are topics that are not familiar to all those reading but specific to different regions of the country such as snow in the winter. New things can give a different perspective to those who are not from those areas. 

    The poems contain mostly figurative language and imagery. In the poem Firefly July, the author describes fireflies as baby stars (Janeczko and Sweet 2018). In Moonlight, the author describes the moonlight through the clouds as a spoon in the sky (Janeczko and Sweet 2018). The figurative language and imagery help the reader by comparing what is being described to something that the reader has never encountered. The description of fireflies is on point and my younger self would understand what I was seeing when I finally saw fireflies for the first time in my mid-twenties. 

    The illustrations look like a mix of mediums. Each illustration describes well what is being described in each poem. For the example of Moonlight, the illustrator places a spoon in the sky (Janeczko and Sweet 2018). Some of the illustrations are just one type of medium and some have multiple. Some illustrations are on one page and some span two. Some illustrations illustrate more than one poem, but most illustrate just one. Each title of each season is worked into the illustration. Some are hard to find at first glance. 

Firefly July

When I was ten, one summer night,

The baby stars that leapt

Among the trees like dimes of light,

I cupped, and capped, and kept.

J. Patrick Lewis

(Janeczko and Sweet 2018)

    When using this in storytime, I would choose books about summer to go with it. It might be fun to do this during the summer reading program. I would introduce the poem by asking if the children have seen fireflies. I might bring in a small flashlight and turn off the lights and turn the flashlight on and off to simulate fireflies. For the activity, I would play pin the firefly in the jar. I would stick up a picture of the jar and have the kids basically play pin the tail on the donkey. For older children, it might be fun to explore mixed medium art that is used in the book and have the children make their own pictures.

References:

Janeczko, Paul B, and Melissa Sweet. 2018. FIREFLY JULY: A Year of Very Short Poems. Candlewick Press.