My Parents Think Im Sleeping is a wonderful collection of short poems crafted by Jack Prelutsky with illustrations by Yossi Abolafia. Each poem explores the inverse qualities of day and night from the eyes of a young boy. The main character has a relationship with light and dark because during the dark hours of the night he is falling asleep. His experiences are written from the imaginative perspective of a child who views the night as an explorer. Yossi Abolafia illustrates the stories using charcoal with ink wash. Charcoal has the ability to create wonderful gradients of color. Applied heavily, this material can create a matte finish. Using a brush or a finger, one can remove charcoal to create an almost smoky effect. Interestingly, the illustrator only uses ink wash for the characters and immediate surrounding within the bedroom. The night sky, our stage, is left very dark in anticipation of its audience.
One poem titled The Clouds I Watched this Afternoon begins, "The clouds I watched this afternoon were flocks of silent sheep, but now they've turned to smoky wolves that watch me while I sleep." The night sky fills the top half of the two-page poem depicting the intersection between white sheep and dark wolves. The sheep are the negative spaces between the menacing wolves, and the wolves are in pursuit of the sheep. When the main character rises, the poem continues, "then once again white fleecy sheep will float across the skies."
A Spooky Sort of Shadow explores the fear that occurs when a shadow of unknown origin appears on the wall in the middle of the night. I find this connection to be personally significant. "...its a creature that I've never seen before, it's creepy, and it's eerie, and so positively tall, that it stretches from the ceiling to the floor" The poem continues as the boy reacts to the scary, needle like teeth that appear on the wall. This fear leads the boy to cry out, "I hope it's had enough to eat today." The poem closes with a revealing image that places the boy as the creator of this beast upon the wall. The boy is holding two combs in his hands and smiling at the wall. Prelutsky leaves the ending subjective, since the reader is unaware of whether or not the boy is truly scared or is playing a scary game with shadow. Many adult readers of this poem may immediately recall similar feelings when trying to fall asleep as a youth. I know that I battled for many years to get over the fear of what laid beneath my bed. Yet during the day, the bed was a safe and uneventful place. Once night ensued, however, the bed transformed into a different place of unknown territory.
Chocolate Cake documents the midnight hunger pain. "I am lying in the darkness with a smile upon my face, as I'm thinking of my stomach, which has got an empty space..." We learn immediately after this declaration that there is a piece of chocolate cake waiting to eaten in the kitchen. The boy then believes that he can surely have this cake tonight if he is able to sneak past his sleeping parents. The noise of snoring will inform him of whether or not they are asleep. "...and if I'm really careful, I will have that cake tonight." As the poem closes, the illustration shows the boy tiptoeing into the kitchen with a look of shock on his face. Before him in the kitchen, his father is eating the cake. The illustration beautifully captures this moment before dialogue between a hungry father and son.
Each poem in this collection is written with very colorful and exciting language. The rhythm of each poem would serve as a powerful read aloud for any age group. I think that for younger elementary students, these fears and misconceptions about the night would be daily experiences. Personally, I could identify with this text when I was very young. My mother read these poems to me when I was little, my name is printed on the front cover of the book. They each bring such tactile memories to my childhood, and I know they would contribute to the lives of any young audience who is mesmerized by just how different the night time can seem.
Here is a wonderful link on the properties of light and energy. One may wish to introduce a science topic after this read aloud to investigate why things really do appear differently at night. http://www.explainthatstuff.com/light.html
How wonderful to see that someone else in our group also wrote about Jack Prelutsky! I find it really interesting too that a different illustrator created the pictures for my book than for this book. And although the poems in this book introduce some very abstract concepts, such as sheep and wolves transforming into one another, and a monster under the bed, I believe they are all very real fears that children experience growing up, and from Jeff's commentary, it seems that Prelutsky does a wonderful job presenting them as such. "My Dog May Be a Genius," however, focuses more on outrageous events that are purely fantasy and stretch the minds of even the most imaginative children. I would love to read this poetry collection and compare the two further!
ReplyDeleteJust read Katie's blog and neat to see that you both chose Prelutsky.. It will be interesting to look into his further. I love your comments and insight about the use of charcoal. I remember being a young child and running and jumping onto my bed because I didn't want the "monster under my bed" to get me. This could be a great read for some children but for others may not help there already existing fears of the dark. Really neat that you added in the idea for a science lesson incorporating night/day and this collection of poetry. I like the idea of using poetry more in the classroom and why not with science!
ReplyDeleteI love the idea of a collection of poems that center around the theme of bedtime. This is a wonderful way to introduce children to poetry because so many can relate to the uncertainties that nighttime entails. The evidence of text you provided illustrates the captivating rhythm and structure the collection possesses. The illustrations you describe seem exciting and add significantly to the mood of the poems. The link you added at the end shows just how poetry can be connected to other content areas, ultimately aiding in the development of reading fluency in all areas.
ReplyDeleteI think Prelutsky wins the "most popular" award in our group. And, like Katie, I'm intrigued that in all three of our books Prelutsky's poems a illustrated by a different person -- and the illustrations all seem incredibly distinctive. I wonder how the process of matching up an illustrator with a poet occurs. Do the poet and illustrator discuss the type of pictures they both think would best illustrate the poems or does Prelutsky (being Prelutsky) find an illustrator whose work he thinks would compliment his poems and then ask him/her to illustrate the book? I really enjoyed your description of "Chocolate Cake" in the post. It would probably be one of my favorite poems in the collection. I do have one question: were the poems on multiple pages? It seems that way from your descriptions, and I was just wondering because the poems from the Prelutsky collection that I read are all on the same page.
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