I'm a week behind, but it's my pleasure to highlight the 2019 Cybils Poetry Finalists. As the category organizer for poetry, I know how much work the panelists put into narrowing down the list of 43 nominations to seven finalists. Without further ado, here they are along with the blurbs the panelists wrote for the titles.
Dreams from Many Rivers: A Hispanic History of the United
States Told in Poems by Margarita Engle
Backed by research, good storytelling and poetic craft,
these short snippets of history from 1491 until now with multiple Latinx
narrators weave a powerful chronicle, poem by poem.
Ink Knows No Borders: Poems of the Immigrant and Refugee
Experience edited by Patrice Vecchione and Alyssa Raymond
Ink Knows No Borders: Poems of the Immigrant and Refugee
Experience edited by Patrice Vecchione and Alyssa Raymond is a poetry anthology
for older readers that celebrates the lives and experiences of immigrants,
refugees, exiles, and their families, who have made this land a home for
generations. With poets like Elizabeth Acevedo, Tarfia Faizullah, Hala Alyan,
Gala Mukomolova, Bao Phi, and Ocean Vuong, from countries such as Iran, Russia,
Mexico, Vietnam, Sudan, Haiti, Syria and beyond, Ink Knows No Borders creates a
sense of the immigrant and refugee experience that… honors its complexity and
variety.” It gives voice to the experiences of young adult first and
second-generation immigrants and refugees as well as providing a historical
perspective in poems by Ellen Bass, Eavan Boland, Jeff Coomer, Li-Young Lee,
and others. Although each poem channels an individual experience, the
collection also offers universal themes on the power of family love, the shock
of war, and the isolation of relocation. The poems take us from trauma to hope
and as Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera reminds us, “let me tell you what a
poem brings . . . it is a way to attain a life without boundaries.”
Ordinary Hazards: A Memoir by Nikki Grimes
Nikki Grimes’ poetry sings with emotion, imagery, and
phrasing in this gripping memoir of her recollections of young life. In her
author’s note, Grimes delves into the challenge of writing a memoir, and the
difficulty of bridging gaps that trauma has taken. At the same time any reader
of Ordinary Hazards will tell you that Grimes has done just that, bridging gaps
by including snippets from notebooks through the years and piecing together a
life that was left in pieces by traumatic experiences at each of life’s turns.
As Grimes notes in her prologue: “It’s a long story, but I’m a poet. I can cut
it short.” Ordinary Hazards is a simply stunning memoir in verse that will lead
readers to understanding and empathy while being dazzled by the words that make
a life.
Other Words for Home by Jasmine Warga
What does it mean to flee your home, leaving half of your
family behind? What does it mean to have a foot in two cultures, to live
between two worlds? What does it mean to be Muslim and Arab in the United
States in a world after 9-11? Jasmine Warga’s free verse novel explores these
questions and so much more in her verse novel Other Words for Home. Jude and
her pregnant mother flee Syria, leaving her father and brother behind, to live
with relatives in Cincinnati. It’s a huge change for a young girl who is trying
to make sense of her new world while dealing with homesickness, fear,
inequality, prejudice, and middle school. Warga’s poems sing with emotion,
sometimes humorous, sometimes heartbreaking, but ultimately hopeful. The verse
novel also includes an author’s note and glossary of Arabic terms. Written
originally as prose, Other Words for Home shines as a novel in verse.
SHOUT by Laurie Halse Anderson
Anderson’s powerful and captivating verse novel brims
with emotion, tension, and personal reflection on her own life as well as our
society and culture. Upper-YA readers will be moved by the experiences she
recounts through solidly-written poems that are strong enough to stand on their
own, but are even more profoundly moving when gathered together here to tell
her story.
Soccerverse: Poems about Soccer by Elizabeth
Steinglass
Short, snappy poems on a kid-friendly topic are told from
a child’s point of view in a variety of fun poetic forms that young readers can
try themselves. The subthemes of friendship and kindness in this poetry
collection apply to this popular sport played all around the globe and to
everyday life.
The Proper Way to Meet a Hedgehog and Other How-To Poems
selected by Paul B. Janeczko
Paul B. Janeczko’s final collection of poems leaves a legacy we can all adore.
The poems in The Proper Way to Meet a Hedgehog are all How to poems but are as
unique as each title suggests. From How to Build a Poem by Father Goose,
Charles Ghigna, to How to Pay Attention from April Halprin Wayland, these poems
inspire children to try new things, imagine new things, and experience new
things. Poetry is the right word in the right place at the right time, and these
poems glitter with just-right words, as in Elaine Magliaro’s How to Be a
Snowflake: “Fashion yourself/ a bit of lace,/ crystalline,/ spun in space…”
Common life experiences such as roasting marshmallows (“It hinges on a second,
an inch…”) as well as humorous antics (“Do not jump on ancient uncles or talk
to bearded bears.”),and adventures such as “Walking on Mars” by Irene Latham
will make you open this book time and time again.
