Stampede!: Poems to Celebrate the Wild Side of School
Author: Laura Purdie Salas
Illustrator: Steven Salerno
Publisher: Clarion Books, 2009
ISBN:978-0618914883Reading Ages: 7 to 9 years
Genre: Children's Poetry, Humor.
I Gave This Book 4 Roars! 🦁🦁🦁🦁
Why 4 Roars? While I was not super excited about the caparisons of children to animals as a literary device in this collection, children
however, will most probably find this collection entertaining and funny.
Poetic Elements: Most of the poems were cute and interesting, but there were several that simply left me flat. I think trying to compare children to wild animals is difficult to do without repeating some of the animalistic qualities.
"No need to visit the zoo to see animals, young scholars—just look at your classmates. From the buzzing “bees” swarming over the playground to the starving pre-lunch “bear” with the rumbling tummy and the “blazing / cardinal, / winging / away” from the rumor of a crush, school is well populated with wild creatures. Salas captures 18 of them in very short, first-person rhymes, and like fugitives from The Island of Dr. Moreau, the children in Salerno’s supple, loosely drawn cartoon illustrations sport an array of evocative animal ears, tails, patterned clothes, and altered facial features. The wild verses are positively shot through with simile and metaphor,
and young readers will run just as rampant,
flocking to these pitch-perfect portrayals of their peers and selves. Grades 1-3."
~~ John Peters, Booklist Review
"[A] large, riotous picture book
collection...with spot-on emotional truths...It's a satisfying whole worth
reading and rereading aloud and LOUD."
~~ Poetry for Children blog,
by Sylvia Vardell (Prof at Texas Woman's Univ, author of POETRY ALOUD HERE)
Appeal: While poetry is very subjective, I have read several of Salas's other poems that really resonated with me. I think her work as a poet is quite impressive. A few poems in this collection felt a little rushed and disjointed.
"No food fights or bullying here; it’s not that kind of
wild. But these children have some behavioral characteristics that can be
likened to animals’ habits. One child tucks his face into his sweater,
turtlelike, to avoid answering a question. The monkey king swings on the jungle
gym and the new student is a bewildered mouse in a maze. While several of
Salas’s very simple verses are sharp and clever, too many are flawed, either by
tenuous child-animal connections or, in some cases, by stretching the theme to
the breaking point. There is also a problem of repetition: Three poems about
crowds of children in the schoolyard variously compare them to swarming bees,
flocks of sparrows and stampeding elephants. Salerno’s digitally enhanced
gouache illustrations are bright and spirited, but only a few succeed in
complementing the poems. Instead, there seems to be a level of discomfort in
handling the material, as if they’re not quite sure how to balance the
appearance of the child as animal. Uneven and disappointing."
~~ Kirkus Reviews
Overall Quality: There are 18 poems about children in school, and the emphasis is on how school brings out the wild side in children.
"Grade 2–4—In 18 verses and whimsical pictures, the behavior
of children is likened to that of animals as hunger transforms them into
ravenous beasts, a new girl is turned into a mouse lost in a maze of hallways,
and the final bell sets off a stampede of thundering elephants. In "Here,
Boy," for example, a hungry youngster becomes a dog racing to get his food
in the cafeteria: "Lunch bell starts ringing,/down the hallway I
bound./I'm a dog who's just heard/the can-opener sound." The cartoon illustration
depicts him with floppy ears, a collar round his neck, and his long belt looped
behind him like a leash. These child-friendly verses may induce a wry chuckle
or two, but overall, they're not memorable. Salerno has a great sense of
composition, but his busy illustrations often distract from the simple imagery.
Stick with stronger collections of school poetry, such as Jack Prelutsky's What
a Day It Was at School!
(HarperCollins, 2006)."
~~Marilyn Taniguchi, Beverly Hills
Public Library, CA, School Library Journal
In the poem "Here, Boy," I think that equating a hungry child to a dog hearing a can-opener sound might be funny to a child, but I think the humor is probably lost on many adult readers.
I did read several of the poems to children and they found them to be funny and quite comical.
"These
poems are delightful on several levels. The analogies are fun in and of
themselves, and then enhanced by Salas' playful language." ~ ~Jen Robinson's Book
Page
Layout: The layout is easy to follow and well organized.
The illustrations were somewhat predictable, but I am sure most children can relate to the funny conglomerations of half animal and half child.
Connections:
Sharing - Sharing the poems in this collection with children was pretty easy. The use of animals makes it very relatable for children. A simple session of a poetry reading and you are stampeding in the right direction.
Activity - The activity I chose to correlate to the poems was a simple one. The children were allowed to collect several parts of animals (heads, tails, feet, etc.,) that they could put together to create a new animal. They were asked to choose parts that represented themselves.
These were cut out pictures or drawn and pieced together. For older students, using a computer to copy and paste together the parts of the animals worked well. They then discussed why they choose each part and how it related to their own experiences in school.
