Award Winning Poetry Time

This year something very special has taken place within John Hopkins University Press’s The Lion and Unicorn Award for Excellence in North American Poetry. The Lion and the Unicorn journal presents the award in one of its three annual publications and works to maintain a current discourse in the study of children’s literature, covering topics such as “the state of the publishing industry, regional authors, comparative studies of significant books and genres, new developments in theory, the art of illustration, the mass media, and popular culture.” For the first time in the history of the Lion and the Unicorn Award, the winning piece of children’s literature is being shared by two titles. As a courtesy of Johns Hopkins University Press, the authors of the winning collections will each receive a $500.00 check. The award is given annually to children’s texts that include poetry and rhyming prose distinguishing them among the North American Poetry community.

Here are the names for the 2014 winning and honor book titles:

Winners-

~ Kindergarde: Avant-Garde Poems, Plays, Stories, and Songs for Children by: Dana Teen Lomax and illustrated by: Cliff Hengst
~ Enjoy It While It Hurts by and illustrated by: JonArno Lawson

Honor Books-

~ Rosa Rose and Other Poems by: Robert Priest and illustrated by: Joan Krygsman
~ My Brother’s Book by and illustrated by: Maurice Sendak

This year’s award is in the theme of experimental poetry for children. Kindergarde: Avant-Garde Poems, Plays, Stories, and Songs for Children is a brilliant anthology being recognized for its ability to capture the young mentality and experience, while incorporating experimental poetry that wasn’t necessarily intended for a children’s audience to begin with. It is also the first anthology in the history of the award to win. The newly coined term, “kindergarde,” refers to the influences of avant-garde artists, such as Picasso and Kandinsky, who were actually inspired by children and discovers a new and unusual aspect of children’s poetry. These poems ultimately move beyond a “cross-writing” element and focus on a variety of poems that will encourage audiences the formality of playing with normative literary traditions.

JonArno Lawson, winner of the 2013 Lion and Unicorn Award, receives a second award for his title Enjoy It While It Hurts. This publication of children’s poetry is being recognized for its vivid illustrations, capturing the kindergarde artistic feel, and for the complex lines of poetry that follow, through a serious yet playful collection of verses. Lawson’s work does not over-simplify language in children’s poetry but includes verses that challenge children’s language and intelligence, making it important to include as this year’s co-winner. 

As the editors of article state, “What we loved about the word kindergarde is that it defined for us a new genre of children’s verse… by poets unafraid to address the continuum of human experience” (382). Kindgarde is one way to sum up this year’s winners and honor books, and it is one that will hopefully inspire other authors of children’s literature to capture the sophistication and intellectual creativity displayed in these books.

References:

• Old Guard à Avant-Garde à Kindergarde: The 2014 Lion and the Unicorn Award for Excellence in North American Poetry: Lissa Paul, Donelle Ruwe, and Craig Svonkin
• Top Image: The Lion and the Unicorn By Julie Dillon

Ten Things You Might Not Have Known About the One Known as Dr. Seuss

Theodor Seuss Geisel is the man behind the name Dr. Seuss. To this day his one-of-a-kind children’s books never get old. But the author that brought us books with silly words and lasting pictures for generations, may have a few surprising things up his sleeves.

1. Dr. Seuss’ first book And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street was rejected twenty-seven times by numerous publishers before it was finally picked up and published by Vanguard Press in 1937. The difficulty for its publication was because the story was written in verse which was out of style at that time and highly criticized for its lack of moral messages for children.
2. The Voom that cleans up the pink stains that gets everywhere in Cat in the Hat Comes Back is theorized to be a representation of the uncontainable pollution and environmental hazard that could have occurred during the Cold War if nuclear weapons continued to be used. 
3. The Butter Battle Book was written cleverly as a way to allow audiences to consider the realist issue of using nuclear weapons. Random House Books published it in 1984, during the Cold War. It is theorized that Seuss left an open-ended ending in order to provoke a cognitive awareness of what could happen in a nuclear war without pushing a direct viewpoint. 
   
4. Dr. Seuss not only was a children’s book author and illustrator, but he was also a very active political cartoonist. He would often draw political cartoons that would speak volumes about American ideology, criticizing wars, race, and anti-Semitism.
5. Dr. Seuss’ first wife Helen Geisel committed suicide at the age of sixty-eight. The cause for this, she wrote in a letter to Seuss, was that she knew he was having an affair and could not bear life without him. 
6. Dr. Seuss identified himself with his Cat character from Cat in the Hat and drew a self-portrait of himself as the Cat in the Hat. This was published in the July 6, 1957 issue of The Saturday Evening Post.
   
7. The Cat in The Hat was Dr. Seuss’ attempt at getting Dick and Jane off children’s shelves because it appeared children lacked an interest in reading them. Seuss wanted to give children something more enjoyable they could learn to read to.
8. Yertle the Turtle was based off of Hilter. Dr. Seuss had no problem with incorporating large grown-up ideology into children stories, like innuendos for what Hilter was doing in Europe in this well-known work. This was also the first ‘burp’ ever written into a children’s book. 
9. Theodor Seuss Geisel started his pen name Dr. Seuss after getting caught hosting a drinking party at Dartmouth College where he was the editor in chief to the college’s magazine. His tenure position was revoked and so in order to still contribute to the magazine he began signing his work by the name Dr. Seuss. 
10. Dr. Seuss wrote and illustrated forty-four children’s books. 

Notes and References:

• http://www.history.com/news/9-things-you-may-not-know-about-dr-seuss
• http://mentalfloss.com/article/28843/10-stories-behind-dr-seuss-stories
• http://www.catinthehat.org/history.htm
• http://www.shmoop.com/cat-in-the-hat-comes-back/cold-war-allegory.html
• Nel, Philip. "Dada Knows Best: Growing up "Surreal" with Dr. Seuss." Children's Literature 27.1 (1999): 150-184.

Images:

• http://childrensbookalmanac.com/2011/03/and-to-think-that-i-saw-it-on-mulberry-street/
• http://www.drseussart.com/collections/
• http://bank.imgdumpr.com/index.php/random/real-political-cartoons-by-dr-seuss-during-wwii-30-pics/