Yellow Bus

WOW Dozen: Encouraging Hope through the use of Children’s Poetry and Verse Novels

By Darryn Diuguid, McKendree University, Lebanon, IL, Willeena Booker, Hatboro-Horsham School District, Horsham, PA, Glenda Funk, Pocatello/Chubbuck, S.D. #25, Pocatello, ID, Joe Pizzo, Black River Middle School, Chester, NJ, Junko Sakoi, Tucson Unified School District, Tucson, AZ, April Halprin Wayland, UCLA Extension Writers’ Program, Los Angeles, CA & Jongsun Wee, Pacific University, Forest Grove, OR

Hope! It’s a universal theme we crave in times of uncertainty such as with national polarizing opinions, health crises and personal hardships. For children, they need to understand hope since they encounter instabilities such as having divorced parents, rough patches with siblings and unmet social-emotional needs. To foster hope in the school community, teachers can frame hope as a way for students to become better citizens through hard work while celebrating successes and learning from challenges. Teachers can also create a positive school culture by focusing on hope during difficult times such as staffing, funding and high-stakes testing. NCTE’s Poetry Awards Committee provides contemporary poems, anthologies, and verse novels that embrace hope. We ask that you celebrate hope with us as we share our favorites. Continue reading →

WOW Dozen: Visual Storytelling with a “Pop” of Yellow

By Janelle Mathis, Professor Emeritus, University of North Texas

The color yellow has always offered opportunities to celebrate, and fittingly so given its association with positive emotions and energy such as happiness, hope, warmth, enlightenment, confidence and enthusiasm. As it is a personal favorite color, I am especially drawn to illustrations that use yellow as a pop of color against a black/white/gray background, also known as monochromatic with a color accent. Thus, when A Dog Wearing Shoes or The Yellow Butterfly became part of my personal and classroom connection, I began gathering titles that had similar approaches to telling their story through art and focusing on the impact of this pop of color in each title, as well as those with perhaps a second accent color when appropriate to the story. My exploration gathered numerous titles and extended as well to those books where yellow (or gold) is a key color although not necessarily on a neutral background, such as A Place Where Sunflowers Grow (Amy Lee-Tai and Felicia Hoshino, il., 2006), Typewriter (Yevgenia Nayberg, 2020), or The Golden Glow (Benjamin Flouw, 2018). It also led to exploring the origins of color in books such as Before Colors, Where Pigments and Dyes Come From (Annette Bay Pimentel and Madison Safer, il., 2023). Continue reading →