Title: Blue Lipstick: Concrete Poems
Author: John Grandits
About the Author: Grandits lives in Red Bank, New Jersey. He is an award winning book and magazine designer. He is a poet, typographer, art director, designer, & writer. He’s written cartoons, articles, humor pieces, fiction and non-fiction for children and adults. He has also art directed adult trade and children’s textbooks. For a short time he was owner and publisher of Film and Video News magazine. He has written and designed books, book jackets & covers, brochures, advertisements, periodicals, record jackets, corporate logos (although he hated doing it), posters and, of course, poems.
Age Level: Young Adult
Synopsis: A 15-year-old girl named Jessie voices typical—and not so typical—teenage concerns in this unique, hilarious collection of poems. Her musings about trying out new makeup and hairstyles, playing volleyball and cello, and dealing with her annoying younger brother are never boring or predictable. Who else do you know who designs her own clothes and writes poetry to her cat? Jessie’s a girl with strong opinions, and she isn’t shy about sharing them. Her funny, sarcastic take on high school life is revealed through concrete poetry: words, ideas, type, and design that combine to make pictures and patterns. The poems are inventive, irreverent, irresistible, and full of surprises—just like Jessie—and the playful layout and ingenious graphics extend the wry humor.
Theme(s): poetry, shape poems, concrete poems, visual poetry
How it can be used in the elementary classroom: This would be a great book for a poetry unit. The teacher can teach students how to create concrete poems. Concrete poems are words, ideas, type, and design that combine to make pictures and patterns. It could really allow your students to be artistic and creative in writing their poems. Blue Lipstick can be read as a class and then the students can experiment writing their own concrete poems. The whole class could write and illustrate their poems and compile a book and each student could have a copy.
Barnes and Noble
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