I’ve been kayaking in the Everglades multiple times and out walking on just about every nature boardwalk that Southwest Florida has to offer, and every time I venture into the swamp, I fall just a little more in love with it. There’s something about the soggy mix of plants and birds and snakes – the blend of danger and beauty in a place that is so quiet and so loud, all at once, that’s irresistible. I have an upcoming book set in the Everglades, too (science thriller WAKE UP MISSING is scheduled for September 2013 with Walker/Bloomsbury) so on our recent trip to Florida last week, I really wanted to do some hiking deeper in the swamp.  I contacted Tod at Tour the Glades, a local guide I’d read about on TripAdvisor, but he was totally booked for the week.

“But what is it that you want to see?”  he asked me on the phone. “Orchids?”

“Actually, we’re more interested in looking for panther tracks and just seeing the whole ecosystem,” I told him.

“Oh! In that case, I’ll  give you directions to a good trail, and you can just go on your own.”  He told me about a trail deep in the Fakahatchee Strand, a state preserved nicknamed “the Amazon of  North America”.  Just off its only real road, an uneven, dirt and crushed gravel trail called Janes Memorial Scenic Drive, are some old logging trails that hikers use now.  “You want to look for Gate 7,” Tod told me.  “That trail goes three miles straight into the swamp and then opens up on a huge prairie. You’ll feel like you’re out on the African savannah.”

I could hear in his voice how much he loves this hike. “Thanks,” I told him. “That sounds perfect.”

“You might see panther tracks in the mud and sand off to the side. It’s a great hike either way,” he promised. “You’ll just want to keep an eye out for snakes.”

So early one morning, my son and I set out for the Fakahatchee Strand.  Sure enough, we found this gate, and behind it, a shady trail leading into the swamp.

 

The air was full of birdcalls and the buzzing of mosquitoes and deer flies as we started out on the trail, slightly elevated above the swampy areas on either side.  This is one of dozens of old logging trams that were built when the Lee Tidewater Cypress Company began logging this area in 1947.  The builders scooped out dirt from either side of the path to raise the ground level enough that they could lay tracks on top of it.  The tramways had to be elevated so that cabbagehead locomotives could get through, pulling the trees.  The side canals filled in with rainwater and swamp, so what remains is a relatively dry trail with marshy areas on either side.  We stayed to the trail, peering into the mud on either side to search for tracks, and listening to the constant rustle of dry palm fronds as critters we could only imagine scuttled deeper into the brush.

There were bugs – oh, were there bugs –not just mosquitoes and deerflies that drew blood, but dazzling giant dragonflies the size of birds, some of them bright scarlet, and butterflies zebra-striped in yellow and black.

 

We were a couple miles in when we spotted our first snake – a cottonmouth stretched out over the trail.

 

It was on the small side – about two and a half feet long – and way over on one side of the trail, so we gave it plenty of room and walked on the other side. The snake didn’t move but did treat us to a warning display as we passed.

 

We marked the path with palm fronts so we’d be extra aware to watch for this snake on our return and continued on our way.  Within another mile, the ground beneath our feet softened from packed mud to loose sand, and the thick walls of vegetation opened up onto the wide open expanse called Four Stake Prairie.

 

I knew even as I took these photos that they wouldn’t do justice to the feeling of endless open space.  And they don’t.  It was a magical-feeling place, with deer that bounded into the cypress woods as we approached, small islands of scorched palm trees that might have hidden Florida panthers, resting in the shade, and wildflowers that lit the parched land like flames.

 

Out here, we’d been told to watch for Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnakes, but we didn’t see or hear any.   I took some photos and notes for my upcoming book (I’ll be adding more details when I get back to that manuscript…and more bugs!), and then it was time to start back toward the car.

The small cottonmouth was not where we’d left him, so after a careful scan of the trail, I walked past our palm fronds, only to hear my son gasp behind me.  The snake was hidden in the grass that separated the two halves of the trail, and I’d walked right past it.  It hadn’t moved, but its mouth was open wide.  The trail just isn’t that wide, and there wasn’t an easy way for my son to walk around the snake without venturing through thick brush into the marsh, so I found a six-foot long stick and tried to coax the snake off the trail.  It wouldn’t leave.  It never made a move toward us, but it also never backed down.  Finally, I used the stick to slide the snake carefully, all coiled up, way over to the edge of the trail until there was room to pass.

 

Less than half a mile further along the trail, we met a much larger cottonmouth – maybe four and a half feet long – lounging half in, half out of the brush.   It was over to one side, so we slipped quietly past and kept walking.

 

After our second snake sighting, I came to the conclusion that while I’m truly fascinated by venomous snakes and find them truly beautiful in a scary sort of way, I prefer hiking with a guide when such snakes are likely to be part of the experience. Being the “snake-watcher” on this walk left me with less time and watchful energy to enjoy the other wildlife – the lizards and butterflies and panther tracks that we might have seen in canals I was too wary to explore.  As gorgeous as this hike was, my son and I were both ready to see the car at the end of the trail.

This wasn’t the most relaxing hike of my life, but it’s one that I’m so happy to have taken.  Amid the carefully landscaped sidewalks and tidy golf course ponds of my parents’ community in Naples, it’s easy to forget what Florida really is.  Here, it was easy to remember.

 

 My blog has been quiet this past week because I was on a mostly-internet free trip to Southwest Florida, visiting some of my favorite people in the world and some of my favorite places, too.  There were warm afternoons reading by the pool and long walks on the beach.   There were boat rides and dolphins and far too many ice cream cones.  And there were two lovely sunrise walks at Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary.

 

If you want to see what Florida was like before the condominiums rose and the roads were all paved, and you want to see all that without having close encounters with venomous snakes (that was a different hike last week…and a blog post for another day), then Corkscrew Swamp is just about perfect.  The boardwalk here loops around for just over two miles, through prairie and cypress woods and swamp. You never know what you’ll see along the way.

 

The feeders just outside the visitor center were crowded with birds when we arrived. That’s an indigo bunting on the left, a female painted bunting on the right.  And here’s a male painted bunting…

This barred owl few right in front of us, then perched on a tree to be admired. This was the first time I’ve seen a barred owl at Corkscew, though we’ve heard them before. Their call is deep and throaty… Whooo…Whooo…Who-cooks-for-yooouu?

I’m always amazed by how close the wading birds pass to the alligators in these small lakes. One of the volunteers said he saw an alligator eat a wood stork the other day, but this heron just walked quietly past, unharmed.

We watched this egret hunt for about fifteen minutes. He seemed to be annoyed with the wood stork nearby that kept catching fish and seemingly playing with them before he finally swallowed them.

Dude…are you going to eat that or what?

The trees at Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary are full of beautiful bromeliads.

The swamp is also home to a famous flower — a ghost orchid high on a cypress tree that flower lovers call the “super-ghost” because it has so many blooms some seasons.  It wasn’t flowering when we were there, but when it does, in the summer, it’s front page news. This great video from the Audobon Society shows how the rare flower is pollinated.

 

If you have the opportunity to hike at Corkscrew, don’t miss it.  You’ll want to arrive when they first open, at 7am.  If you go much later this time of year, the deer flies will be biting.  Bring binoculars.  And a camera.  And a quiet sense of wonder.  You won’t be disappointed.

 

The Titanic story has certainly been told and told again over the 100 years since her sinking, but in THE WATCH THAT ENDS THE NIGHT, Allan Wolf has managed to capture the voices of the beings that were part of that story in a wholly new and captivating way.

This novel-in-verse chronicles the story of the unsinkable Titanic, from the boarding and preparations to set sail to the voyage, the sinking, and Carpathia‘s rescue and delivery of the survivors to New York. The undertaker’s voice is ever-present, too, capturing the scope of this tragedy intermittently throughout the story, always there from beginning to the end, lest readers forget how this one ends.

I’m always impressed when an author takes a story from history — a story to which I already know the ending — and manages to present it in a way that creates suspense and tension, nonetheless, and Wolf has done this beautifully. Who will survive, and how? The characters whose voices rise in poetry throughout the text feel fully realized, so the stakes are high when the inevitable collision happens and the ship begins to sink.

Those voices are unique, too, and that makes this a great book for book clubs, literature circles, and classes to discuss as part of a conversation on how form and meaning intersect. The young boys, for example, speak in short, back-and-forth bursts like a game of toss-the-ball, while the poems in the voice of the personified iceberg speak in cold, measured iambic pentameter until the very end. There’s simply so much to talk about here, and paired with some nonfiction readings on Titanic and a film clip or two, this could be make for some great connections that meet Common Core Standards in a way that’s truly engaging to kids.

This title would also make an amazing mentor text for a student research project. In THE WATCH THAT ENDS THE NIGHT, Wolf has painstakingly researched two dozen individuals who were part of the Titanic disaster as well as the ship itself and the events surrounding her sinking, and he’s pared what must have been volumes of notes into this beating heart of a story that not only chronicles the historical incident but also paints a haunting picture of the humanity wrapped up in it. Thirty pages of back matter provide the real-life biographies of Wolf’s poetic voices, an extensive and comprehensive bibliography, and further details about Titanic. This format could be adapted to virtually any major historical event students may be studying. Teachers might challenge students to research the event and choose a selection of voices from the incident to speak in poetry, or each student in a class might take on one voice to create a whole group story of the event told from multiple perspectives.

THE WATCH THAT ENDS THE NIGHT is an ambitious and beautifully crafted book. Share it with your advanced middle school and high school readers, history buffs, and writers; they’ll all find something amazing to take away from this new version of an old story.

Poetry Speaks

(by Kate Messner, Copyright 2012)

 

Good evening.

Thanks for coming.

I’m honored to have this month

A whole month, and April, too (so shiny!)

Dedicated to my words, my breath, my beat.

 

But before I go on,

I’d like to take this opportunity

To clear up a misunderstanding

About who I am and what I do

How I speak and what I mean

Why my tears run blood-red

And my red blood pulses with ancient drums

Why my heart sprays out confetti when it beats

Like somebody shook up New Year’s Eve

And sent juicy, frothy words

Busting out

All over your nice clean suit.

 

Who am I?

I am poetry, and let’s get one thing straight.

I am not reserved.

I am not reserved for anyone –

Not dead white men

Scribbling away with quill pens

Not women in crisp black suits

Sipping champagne in big city art centers.

I got nothing against them,

(I do enjoy a black-tie night now and again,)

But don’t you hang a reserved sign on me.

This table has chairs and pens enough for everyone.

 

I am too many things to be reserved for

Any one thing

Any one body

Any one world.

 

I am your best day

And your worst.

 

I’m the bright-light joy

Of brand new babies

Breathing air for the first time,

Crying out,

Hearing words – gushes, rushes of language

Life, super-charged.

 

I am hands-touch, first-kiss

E-lectricity

And all the muddled up

Jumbled up messes that come after.

 

I am the dark-night-dying-red,

Close-your-eyes and scream pain

Of towers falling.

Over and over

Rewind- replay- still ends the same way

When all we have are words

That weep.

 

Everybody knows pain

And everybody knows joy.

The wonder of crocus shoots

And chocolate frogs

Stars that shoot across the sky

So fast you’re not even sure

They were real.

But they were.

 

So I am not reserved.

 

If you need to slap that sign on me

You just add a note at the bottom

In magic marker or crayon, maybe

Make it say

“Reserved for the old and the young

The rich and the poor

Hearts laughing or crying

Or almost too angry to write.

Reserved for Whole Mad World.”

That’ll do.

 

Because I am poetry.

And I am out-going –

Out going on subways and buses

In school kids’ lunch bags

And playground rhymes

On the lips of farmers praising early spring

And mothers whispering late-night feedings

I am out-going

Going out –

Going out to preach and party and mourn

Going out to grow the blades of grass

Sing them up into springtime

Words breathe oxygen, sure as they make sounds.

 

I am poetry, and –

 

What’s that? My time is up?

I see the buffet table’s ready

So I’ll step down.

 

But I’ll never be quiet

Know that much.

 

You’ll hear me out there,

Crying when you are, too.

Screaming injustice till somebody listens,

Laughing at bawdy jokes

In my too-bright red suspenders.

You’ll see me pointing to that sunrise the color of berries,

That leaf that looks like an old man’s face,

That girl in the corner with dreams,

Whispering

Look.

Pay attention.

See.

 

Thanks for coming today.

Enjoy this feast of words.

And when it’s over,

You go on out.

And make a poem.

Do it.

Make a poem of your own.

 

Copyright 2012, Kate Messner

A note about sharing poems online: Teachers – Feel free to share this poem with your students, no special permission needed.  Bloggers – If you’d like to share this poem with your readers, please do so by quoting a short excerpt and linking to the full version here. Thanks – and happy National Poetry Month!

A poem for my daughter, who steals my books before I’ve finished reading

(with a nod to William Carlos Williams, who probably swiped books, too, in his day)

This is just to say

 

I have absconded with the book

 

That you were reading

 

(and really enjoying, too)

 

and claimed it for my own.

 

Forgive me.

 

I was starved for a story,

 

and its voice was so crisp,

 

its plot so juicy…

 

I am still licking sweet details

 

from my thieving fingers.

 

 

 

TED released two of my favorite talks from the 2012 conference this week — both with important messages about the power of failure in science and innovation. Both Regina Dugan of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and Donald Sadoway, an inventor and MIT professor, shine a bright light on the power of experimentation and the courage to fail.

 

Pair these talks in the classroom, and ask students these questions:

What role did failure play in the success of both Regina Dugan and Donald Sadoway?

How has failure played a beneficial role in your life?

Do you think schools give students enough opportunities to experiment, fail, and try again?

What would you do if you knew that failure was impossible? (from Regina Dugan’s TED talk)

And one more talk on failure – from one of the most successful writers of all time –

 

And finally…an article to share. How might the emphasis on success in standardized testing be affecting students’ ability to experiment and learn?

My week started with an early-morning drive through the mountains on Monday, for an author visit at McConnellsville Elementary School in Camden, NY.  My author visit kicked off  the school’s Parents as Reading Partners celebration, and the day started…with dancing in the gym!  The McConnellsville teachers (and the principal, too!) really know how to bust a move. They got the kids super-excited for two weeks of special reading activities. What a wonderful way to start the day!  Side note: If the kids meet their reading goals these two weeks, they get to turn their principal into a “human popcorn ball.”  I so wish I were going to be around to see this!

Many students in the assemblies had read MARTY MCGUIRE or THE BRILLIANT FALL OF GIANNA Z., and they’d all read SEA MONSTER’S FIRST DAY with their librarian.  They knew that this book was inspired by Lake Champlain’s legendary lake monster, Champ, so they also learned a little about the legend and voted on a bulletin board… “Do You Think Champ is Real?”  The verdict? Overwhelmingly yes!

From left to right, that’s librarian Shelley DeLosh, me, and reading chair AnnMarie Knight.

I told the kids my story of seeing something big and unidentified in the lake years ago (we still don’t know what it was – but it was 20-25 feet long…and swimming) and then we turned our attention to the woods to talk about OVER AND UNDER THE SNOW.  I do a puppet show when I share this book with younger readers, and I always have so much fun.

Here’s one of my terrific helpers, pointing out a hiding snowshoe hare in OVER AND UNDER THE SNOW.

McConnellsville’s older readers were excited about my newest book, EYE OF THE STORM, so I read them the first chapter and then left behind a copy for the school library.

Thanks, McConnellsville Elementary School – I was truly honored to be part of your reading celebration!

The TED Team launched a new initiative this week — TED-ED, focused on sharing short, dynamic videos for classroom and lifelong learning. The initial launch is modest — just a handful of videos. But they’re engaging and concise and really perfect for including in lessons.

Here’s an example — Awele Makeba is a storyteller from Oakland, California who was part of the recent TED 2012 session called “The Classroom,” along with me and a bunch of other storytellers of different kinds, who teach in different ways.  Her talk is about the power of stories — how they shape us, and how we, in turn, can shape the world.  If you’ve read this book…

…you’ll have a special appreciation for Awele’s story.

Classroom Connections:

Read:

TWICE TOWARD JUSTICE: THE STORY OF CLAUDETTE COLVIN by Phillip Hoose and Claudette Colvin

WE WERE THERE, TOO: YOUNG PEOPLE IN U.S. HISTORY by Phillip Hoose

Listen:

Before Rosa Parks, There was Claudette Colvin”  from NPR

An interview with Rosa Parks

Connect:

From Scholastic, “Rosa Parks: How I fought for civil rights”

Awele’s website

For a really fascinating classroom conversation, pair Awele’s TED Talk with this one from Bryan Stevenson, about race, poverty, privilege, and justice in our own times.

How far have we come as a nation? And where do we go from here?

Two months ago, I got an email that simultaneously thrilled and terrified me – I’d been selected to speak at the TED2012: Full Spectrum as part of a session called The Classroom.  After two months of frantic preparation – talk-writing and graphics-making and question-emailing – I flew out to Long Beach last week and checked into the Hyatt next to the performing arts center where the conference is held. It was an amazing week, full of insight, creativity, and courage, and I know that I’ll be processing for months to come. I’ve heard people say that it’s impossible to come away from a TED conference as quite the same person you were when you left home, and I think that’s true. It’s hard to be in the presence of such incredible thinkers and world changers without hoping to do a little more for the world, too.  So with that in mind, here are six lessons I learned at TED, from the light-hearted to the life-changing…

1.  Don’t leave your badge on the coat rack.

This is important if you hope to learn anything else at all, because without it, they will not let you in.  Not even if your face is on a great big poster in the lobby.  True story.

During the Monday rehearsal session, I had a chance to run through my talk on stage, with the microphone and my visuals and everything except the audience. When the AV crew helped me with the mike, they hung my TED Conference badge on the coat rack backstage.  When my rehearsal was over, they came out to the stage to help me take off the mike, and I left. Without my badge. I only got two steps out the door before I realized, but as soon as I turned around to go back in, the security guard who’d just watched me walk out asked to see my badge. I explained that I left it backstage, and as I was doing so, a nice TED staffer came along and offered to escort me back to get it. That was good enough for the first three security officers we met – but not for the last one, who detained me in a hallway while the terrific TED guy went to find my badge for me.  Silver lining: I felt very safe and secure all the rest of the week.

2.  Introduce yourself and make friends.

I knew this from way back in kindergarten, of course, but somehow, I was worried that it would be different at TED, in a sea of CEOs and venture capitalists. Not so – and while I spent a good part of the week with the other educators who were part of The Classroom session, I also met some mighty nice Google engineers, writers, magicians, researchers, futurists, film makers, artists, CEOs, angel investors, and social scientists.  You hear a lot about “making contacts” at TED, and I supposed I made some of those, too. But the best part of the week? Knowing that I shared this experience with some like-hearted people who will be friends long after I’ve lost track of my conference badge.

3.  Be brave.

The most moving talks I heard at TED2012 had a kind of raw honesty about them. Brene Brown spoke about vulnerability and what happened after her original TEDx talk on that topic.  Susan Cain talked about being an introvert at her childhood camp and told to put her books away and socialize.   Bryan Stevenson gave an incredibly challenging and honest talk about race, poverty, privilege, and justice.  New Hampshire teacher Angie Miller spoke about the box of primary documents she keeps as a record of her life – including the not-so-positive letters from parents, alongside the glowing ones.  Bravery takes many different forms, but it always inspires the people around you to be a little more courageous, too.

4. It’s okay to be afraid.  Because courage isn’t the opposite of fear; it’s what you do even though you’re kind of scared.

On the day of our speaker briefing, TED host Chris Anderson spoke to a room full of speakers who would take the stage over the next four days.  Some of us looked more anxious than others, but there we were – the preparation was over (except for a few more late-night practices in the hotel room!) and it was time to do this amazing thing we’d been invited to do.

“Let a thousand experiments bloom,” Chris told those of us who were clustered in the front few rows of that theater that would soon hold 1500. “Be proud of what you’ve prepared and how you do it.”

My new friend Cesar Kuriyama, who spoke about his plan to record one second of every day of his life on video, mentioned to Bill Nye that he was nervous. Bill assured him this was okay. “If you weren’t nervous, it wouldn’t be worth doing.”

5. Never underestimate the power of spectacular failure.

 If there’s one big idea I took away from TED, it was this. Story after story from people who took the stage were stories of failure.  Donald Sadoway from MIT talked about the liquid metal battery he and his students have invented – and he included the stories about how it didn’t work, before it did work.  Andrew Stanton, the creator of Toy Story and WALL-E, shared a scene he had originally envisioned for the opening of Toy Story.  It didn’t work and didn’t make the cut.  And Regina Dugan, the head of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, asked us this: What would you do if you knew that failure was impossible?  Without failure, there is no creativity.  There are no aerial robots, no new energy prospects, no stories at all. The only way to learn to fly, she told us, is to fly.

6.  Regular people can change the world.

I don’t care if it’s a cliché. It’s true. Speaker after speaker who took the stage at TED showed that regular people with extraordinary passion and courage can do seemingly impossible things.  This video, remixed based on the first three days of the TED conference, captures that feeling for me perfectly.

 Other speakers, it turns out, learned a lot at TED, too. Check out Brene Brown’s thoughts here – and more “Lessons from TED Speakers”  links on the TED blog.

Last night, my daughter and I gathered a pile of books to prepare the serious business of choosing our next bedtime read-aloud.  It’s not a decision we make lightly; this is a book that will bring us together and linger in both our thoughts every night for a while.  It can’t be too scary or too sad.  (When we read THE ONE AND ONLY IVAN, wonderful as it was, we had to read parts during the day, because who wants to wake up with those red, puffy, crying eyes?)  We settled on SHAKESPEARE’S SECRET by Elise Broach for right now and Rebecca Stead’s FIRST LIGHT is on deck in the book-cubby that hangs from her bed.

My daughter’s been reading voraciously on her own  for years, and occasionally when I mention to a parent that we read aloud every night, I see raised eyebrows. Why read aloud to a kid who’s been tackling Harry Potter on her own since first grade?   But I believe read-alouds have special powers.  They do. Powers to bring us together and create a shared reading experience that’s different from the one we have, even if we’re reading the same novel on our own, at the same time.

That’s why I’m a huge advocate of reading aloud to older students in schools, too.  When I taught 7th grade English, we always had a read-aloud book.  Sometimes, all my classes read the same title, but other times, they voted by class and came up with vastly different choices that suited their collective personalities. One group of classes chose OUT OF MY MIND by Sharon Draper, SCRAWL by Mark Schulman, GIRL, STOLEN by April Henry, and BREADCRUMBS by Anne Ursu — four titles that really couldn’t be more different from one another. All four were perfect for the group that chose them.

Many older students who are struggling readers have fallen out of love with stories.  Ask a preschool class, “Who loves to read stories?”  Every hand goes up.  But ask that same question to a group of 5th graders, 7th graders, 9th graders…and you’ll see the numbers dwindle as the kids get older. Somewhere along the way, our kids who struggle have learned that reading is hard work — and often, hard work that they’re not especially good at. That makes it hard to love a story.

Unless….

Unless someone shares one with you aloud, with no strings attached, no test at the end, and that someone reads with expression and does all the voices.  Teachers of older students have the power to give stories back to struggling readers, to reintroduce books as a joy rather than a struggle.  It’s such a powerful thing to see.

A few years ago, a guidance counselor stopped by my 7th grade classroom one morning to let me know that one of my kids was having a particularly rough day and probably wouldn’t make it through class. When he arrived, I could tell he wasn’t himself, and he came up to me right away to tell me he was leaving for the study room so he wouldn’t get in trouble.

“I can write you a pass to go if you want,” I said, “but we’re reading CHAINS. And we’re at that good part. Do you want to give it a try and see how it goes?”

He nodded and went to his seat, and I kept an eye on him as I read. I watched the story change his afternoon. I watched his hands unclench and his face relax, and watched him leave in a better place than he was when he came. And it wasn’t my doing; it was Isabel and Curzon, I think, who made him feel like things might be okay, and it was those funny British soldier wives who made him laugh.  I saw him later in the day, too, and he still seemed to be doing all right.  I wasn’t surprised.  Stories stay with us.  They nurture us, long after the reading is through. That’s why you’re never too old for a read-aloud.