At Emerson this month, we are celebrating Arab American Heritage Month, to honor our Arab American students. We also want to provide a positive message to combat the persistent anti-Arab, anti-Muslim rhetoric we hear daily via our national media. I am so happy to be able to highlight the poet Naomi Shihab Nye.

Naomi Shihab Nye

Naomi Shihab Nye, the daughter of a Palestinian father and an American mother, has lived in Ramallah in Jordan, the Old City in Jerusalem, and San Antonio, Texas. She writes for both children and adults. I first came to know her work through the book she edited: This Same Sky: A Collection of Poems from Around the World.

Each week this month, I will be sharing one of her poems with our 4th & 5th graders as we celebrate Arab American Heritage Month. We are starting by watching this video, with Naomi Shihab Nye reading aloud her poem "One Boy Told Me" from the PBS series Poetry Everywhere.

This was a perfect introduction for my students, because it combined humor, poetic language and relatable experiences. I love the way they connect to a little kid's perspective. Here are just a few of their favorite lines:

"Oatmeal cookies make my throat gallop."

"Grown-ups keep their feet on the ground
when they swing. I hate that."

"My tongue is the car wash
for the spoon."

"My toes are dictionaries.
Do you need any words?"

see the full text of "One Boy Told Me" at the Poetry Foundation

In her writing, Naomi Shihab Nye has been inspired by her experiences as an Arab-American, as well as by life's little details. This is part of what I want to impart to students -- that poetry combines memories, small details and bigger ideas.

I will be sharing three poetry books and one picture book by Naomi Shihab Nye this month with my 4th & 5th graders:

• Come With Me: Poems for a Journey
• Honeybee: Poems and Short Prose
• A Maze Me: Poems for Girls
• Sitti's Secrets

I have collected my video resources for poetry month on my YouTube Poetry Playlist. If you make a purchase using the Amazon links on this site, a small portion goes to Great Kid Books. Thank you for your support.

©2016 Mary Ann Scheuer, Great Kid Books

"Poetry matters. Poetry, like all art, gives shape and texture and depth of meaning to our lives." -- President Obama, celebrating the National Student Poet Program

Poetry has the ability to speak to us, to give us courage to speak out, to feel heard. It is crucial that we give our children the opportunity to discover poetry that speaks to them, that helps them see themselves or to see others. I was delighted to discover the National Student Poet Program, especially the videos celebrating the 2015 winners.

The National Student Poets Program is the country’s highest honor for young poets (grades 10–11) presenting original work.

Annually, five students are selected for one year of service as literary ambassadors, each representing a different geographic region of the country. By elevating and showcasing their work for a national audience, the program strives to inspire other young people to achieve excellence in their own creative endeavors and promote the essential role of writing and the arts in academic and personal success.

I have enjoyed exploring the YouTube channel for the National Student Poets Program. It is incredibly inspiring to hear the different young poets share their poetry and talk about their year of service. I am looking forward to sharing with my students Chastity Hale's video:

"Poetry is significant to me because it is a lens where I can view the world and see things through different perspectives. I've always used poetry to further my understanding of other people and spread messages." -- Chastity Hale

You can watch the entire ceremony, in which First Lady Michelle Obama honors this year's five National Student Poets. I especially want to share this section as Jacqueline Woodson, one of my all-time favorite poets, honors the poets.

Enjoy sharing these videos with young people in your life.

©2016 Mary Ann Scheuer, Great Kid Books

The Favorite Poem Project is dedicated to celebrating, documenting and encouraging poetry’s role in Americans’ lives. Founded by Robert Pinsky shortly after he was appointed the 39th Poet Laureate of the United States in 1997, this project has become a wonderful resource and inspiration.

Favorite Poem Project

It began as an initiative to create an audio and visual archive of 1,000 Americans reading aloud their favorite poems. Americans from every state and from all ages have submitted their favorite poems. I have loved exploring the resources available online, both video and audio recordings of Americans young and old sharing their favorite poems. Today, I'd like to share two favorite videos that particularly spoke to me.

Pov Chin, a student from Stockton, California, shares Langston Hughes' "Minstrel Man". I love how she connects to this poem, how it helps her express her own experience as a teen.

You can find the full text of the poem at PBS NewsHour, along with a transcript of Pov's reflections.

"I like it (Langston Hughes' poem) because it describes me. Like, I walk around with a smile on my face all the time at school and with friends and stuff, but I still have different thoughts running through my head. It’s never stable. It’s always going."

"We Real Cool" by Gwendolyn Brooks, is a poem that's often shared in middle school--I think that kids will respond to the way John Ulrich, a student in South Boston, Massachusetts, reads it and talks about it.

John speaks about the "cluster of death" that has surrounded his neighborhood, from young people's deaths due to drug overdoses and depression. He also shares the program he started "South Boston Survivors", to help young people find creative sparks to redirect them from depression.

"When I first heard 'We Real Cool', ...it just made sense to me, how things started out so innocent and got so drastic so quick."

Yina Liang, a student in Decatur, Georgia, shows how she connects to Emily Dickinson's poem "I'm nobody! Who are you?" I particularly like the way that Yina shows how she has to juggle all of the expectations she feels, all of the demands--and how sometimes, she just wants to escape and be nobody.

"I think I discovered this poem in 7th grade... Every year, as life gets busier, the poem keeps coming back to me and it connects so much better every time that I think, in time, it discovered me instead."

There are many more Favorite Poem Project videos that spoke to me as an adult, but today I wanted to share the ones that I think will particularly resonate with kids. I hope you enjoy exploring these resources as much as I have.

©2016 Mary Ann Scheuer, Great Kid Books