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(Original book trailer by MV Meeks)
Bibliography
Sidman, Joyce. Dark Emperor & Other Poems of the Night. Illustrated by Rick Allen. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Books for Children. ISBN 9780547152288
Plot summary
This collection of poems reveals the wonder of the night and the mysterious creatures that emerge after nightfall including informational sidebars of biological details.
Critical Analysis
Joyce Sidman again delivers another exquisite collection of lyrical poems celebrating nature. In Dark Emperor, Sidman delves deep into the mysterious natural nightlife that emerges in the forest after dark. The twelve poems embrace newt, moon, oak tree, mushrooms, porcupette, and orb spider among others in a variety of poems that range from a ballad (“Ballad of the Wandering Eft”) to a concrete poem of a great-horned owl, and finish with an ubi sunt that morns the coming of dawn (Moon’s Lament). The music of the poems comes to life with repetitive phrases (“The mushrooms come/the mushrooms come”), consonance (“I am a baby porcupette/I nibble in the nighttime wet”), and alliterative sounds (“…a single searing, unstoppable sound). Metaphors and similes abound such as those found in “Night-Spider’s Advice”: “Life’s a circle./Just keep going around./Do your work, then sit back and see/what falls in your lap.”
Rick Allen’s debut illustrations deepen the wonder of the night through his painstaking relief printings carved from sheets of linoleum mounted on wood blocks. The layered, black-print images intensified by green and brown watercolor with touches of orange-red host a myriad of elaborate images and creatures on each page. The particularly dark, detailed prints on the front and end page spreads actually feel slightly textured and rough compared to other print pages in the book. Readers of all ages will enjoy the biographical sidebars of information that accompany the creatures spotlighted in each poem as well as the useful glossary of natural terms.
Reviews and Honors
· Booklist: “This picture book combines lyrical poetry and compelling art with science concepts. Here, poems about the woods at night reveal exciting biology facts that are explained in long notes on each double-page spread.”
· Publishers Weekly: “Spiders offer advice, porcupettes pirouette, and the moon laments the dawn, all illuminated by debut talent Allen’s detailed yet moody prints, which encapsulate the mysteries and magic of the midnight hours.”
· Newbery Medal 2011
· Boston Globe Horn Book Honor 2011 - Picture Book
· ALA Notable Children's Books - All Ages Category: 2011
· Booklist Editors' Choice - Books for Youth - Middle Readers Category: 2010
· Horn Book (Reviewed 9/1/10)
· Bulletin for the Center for Children’s Books (Reviewed 9/1/10)
· School Library Journal (Reviewed 8/1/10)
· Wilson’s Children (Reviewed 10/1/10)
Connections
· Engaging in collaboration with science teachers, create a natural science/biology experience in the library utilizing books and resources that fit current science TEKS for the grade level being served. In addition to creating stations that utilize suitable science technology sites and hands-on objects (and possibly critters), have a station devoted to more nature books by Sidman including:
o Ubiquitous: Celebrating Nature’s Survivors ISBN 9780618717194
o Song of the Waterboatman & Other Pond Poems ISBN 9780618135479
· After reading selected poems from Dark Emperor, allow students to create their own nighttime nature poems in the dark by flashlight.
· For older readers, have students create two nature poems written from the points of view of two creatures/plants/etc. that are connected in relationship with one another. Be sure to share the two voice poems by Sidman in Just Us Two: Poems About Animal Dads ISBN 9780761315636
