FLORIAN POETRY

Florian, Douglas. Dinothesaurus. La Jolla, CA: Beach Lane Books, 2009. ISBN:  978-1-416-97978-4.

Poetic Elements:   Florian uses an assortment of poetry elements and varies their use throughout the collection of poems in this book.  He has a knack for using clever wordplay.  Rhyme is probably the easiest element to recognize overall.  The phrases “tough as tanks and hard as nails,” “heavy clubs swing from our tails,” and “we have heavy-armored skin,” are all taken from the poem “Ankylosaurus.”  They exhibit the use of idioms.   Alliteration is heavily emphasized in the poem “Pterosaurs” almost making fun of the letter P that is kept silent when pronouncing the dinosaur’s name.  “With widespread wings and pteeth pto ptear,” is a key example where Florian created a line that entailed alliteration, but added his own touch of humor by placing the silent letter P in front of the “T” words.  In “Brachiosaurus” onomatopoeia is modeled in the written phrase, “It traveled very   s   l   o   w  .”  Both the literary elements of alliteration and onomatopoeia are exaggerated in a combined effort in the poem “The End of Dinosaurs” when the words stutter, “ ch-ch-choke” or “c-c-cold.”  Florian clearly has an impressive record for succinctly presenting ideas rich in poetry components.

Appeal:  This book is sure to be a “babe magnet” in being able to attract the interest of young people with no problems.  The touch of humor that trickles throughout the poems is quite amusing.  Florian’s artwork adds another layer of appeal mixed with funniness.  Although dinosaurs and humans did not live simultaneously, Florian constantly combines the two interacting with each other in his pictures in all sorts of ways. For instance, would a dinosaur really help scratch a boy’s back because he had an itch?  Of course not!  He cleverly plays real words off of words that don’t really even exist. The comical sensation keeps the poem in motion. 

Overall Quality:  The poems in this book are definitely fitting for young people to read and listen to.  They are all about dinosaurs and what they were like when they walked the Earth.  The arrangement of the poems are perfectly in balance with a beginning poem to get the reader ready to learn about the dinosaur ages and a concluding poem that mentions various possibilities for why dinosaurs became extinct.  The formatting of the poems is pretty similar in looks and size.  Assistance in helping pronounce the dinosaur names is included before the reading of the poem.   The design of the book resembles that of a picture book.  The illustrations are also created by Douglas Florian and were done with gouache, collage, colored pencils, stencils, dinosaur dust, and rubber stamp on primed brown paper bags.  They are abstract creations, but a perfect choice since dinosaurs and humans are mysteries to each other.  I would definitely recommend reading Florian poetry books to others.  He is doubly talented in being an artist and writer and is able to share nonfiction information in a tangible way by writing poetry books.

 The Poets:  Douglas Florian has written the collection of poems in this book.  It is an anthology that focuses on different kinds of dinosaurs that once lived.  Florian is a notable poet who has written many books that mostly pertain to animals and ideas of nature.  He has received the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award and has received an ALA Notable Children’s Book Award.  He is also an accomplished artist who provides all of the artwork for his books.  He features his abstract art in solo and group exhibitions. Florian’s website can be viewed at http://www.douglasflorian.com

Layout:  This book is relatively new, but even if it was older, the poems in this book would still be current because they are about dinosaurs which are extinct.  The award winning Douglas Florian is the only poet represented in this book.  There are a total of 20 poems.  Besides a beginning poem to open up about dinosaurs and a closing poem to conclude about dinosaurs, Florian has squeezed 18 poems that each speak of a different named dinosaur in his book.  The first poem in the book is called “The Age of Dinosaurs” and introduces the time periods when the namely beasts were alive.   The last poem is called “The End of Dinosaurs” and relays possible theories of how dinosaurs became extinct.  Each poem features a two-page spread.  Florian’s paintings seem to take precedence and dominate the featured poem which is squeezed in somewhere.  The poems are written in the same font and size throughout, but are relocated to a different spot for each layout depending on the illustration.  Each poem written is plainly titled by the name of the particular dinosaur being recognized.  The spacing between the poem title and the poem provides room to share pronunciation help with how to correctly say the dinosaur’s name and then mentions in parenthesis a translation.  For example, Ankylosaurus which would be pronounced AN-kee-lo-SAW-rus (fused lizard).   Some of the poems are written in a first-person view where the featured dinosaur is the one speaking personally about itself.  The book includes a table of contents, “glossarysaurus”  for glossary, a page sharing information on different dinosaur museums and fossil sites, and a selected bibliography with further reading suggestions. 

Spotlight Poem:  Sharing the book Dinothesaurus in its entirety, would be my way of getting students excited about starting a thematic unit of study on dinosaurs.  Before beginning the book I would have pre-written all 18 dinosaur names on separate little papers.  If I happened to have had a class of 20 students, I would write “Free Pick” on two of the slips and mix them in with the others.  I would tell students that each of them will be getting to report more information than what is shared in Florian’s poem about the dinosaur they hand pick on their slip. Being good listeners as I read Dinothesaurus as they anxiously wait to draw a dinosaur name are my hopes.

I also like the idea of reading the poems through and then deciding what is fiction and what is fact for each poem.

An additional alphabetizing activity that I would want to include sometime during the dinosaur unit of study would be to print out each dinosaur name large enough for others to see.  Each student would hold the name of the dinosaur they were assigned. I would randomly pick 5 students to stand up with their card and ask if they could order themselves in ABC order.  I would have those 5 in order remain standing and pick 5 more friends and ask them to do whatever rearranging they needed to do to now get all 10 of them in alphabetical order.  Those still seated could help those that were standing.  I would then pick 5 more students to stand up and see if they could work together to figure out the order now.  One last round of students being added to the standing group would get everyone alphabetized and refreshed on how the rules for alphabetizing work.

“Seismosaurus” by Douglas Florian

SIZE-mo-SAW-rus (earthshaking lizard)

Seismosaurus:  tremendous in size.

Seismosaurus:  stupendous lengthwise.

Seismosaurus:  could make the earth shake.

Seismosaurus:  as large as a lake.