Put Your Eyes Up Here: And Other School Poems

by Kalli Dakos, G. Brian Karas (Illustrator)

Overview

Put your eyes up here,
put your eyes on me!

Ms Roys asks for her students' attention, but she doesn't really need to. Who can ignore a teacher who wears silly hats and colorful skirts, has a graveyard for used-up pencils, believes in magic and ghosts, and has special eyeballs that let her see the things that make her students unique?

In this collection of fun, lively poems by Kalli Dakos, you'll explore the world of Ms. Roys's classroom — and you may not want to go home!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781416918028
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers
Publication date:	07/01/2006
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	64
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.20(d)
Age Range:	7 - 11 Years

About the Author

Kalli Dakos is an elementary school reading specialist who has written many books,including Mrs. Cole on an Onion Roll, illustrated by JoAnn Adinolfi, and two illustrated by G. Brian Karas: Don't Read This Book, Whatever You Do! More Poems About School and the Children's Choice Award-winning book If You're Not Here, Please Raise Your Hand: Poems About School. Kalli visits schools all over the United States and Canada to talk to students. She also gives teacher workshops. She lives in Ottowa, Canada ,and Sterling, Virginia. You can learn more about Kalli at www.kallidakos.com.

G. Brian Karas has illustrated many children’s books, including Muncha! Muncha! Muncha! And Tippy-Tippy-Tippy, Hide! by Candace Fleming; Incredible Me by Kathi Appelt; the High-Rise Private Eyes series by Cynthia Rylant; and Ivan by Catherine Applegate, which was a New York Times bestseller. His books have been named ALA Notables, Booklist Editor Choices, SLJ Best Books, and Boston Globe Horn Book Honor books. He lives in upstate New York. Visit him online at GBrianKaras.com.

Editorial Reviews

"A sure-to-be-popular choice for back-to-school and for the poetry shelf."
— Booklist

From the Publisher

Two new titles playfully present the ups and downs of classroom life through poems. Put Your Eyes Up Here and Other School Poems by Kalli Dakos, illus. by G. Brian Karas, finds narrator Penny unnerved by her new teacher, Ms. Roys, who is not normal-for one thing, she has a collection of fake hands, and some weird jewelry: "Blue toilet bowls that really flush,/ We love her earrings-oh, so much!" But Ms. Roys's bag of tricks makes for a magical school experience in this collection of light verse sprinkled with cheerful b&w line drawings. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Gr 3-5-Like The Goof Who Invented Homework (Dial, 1996) and If You're Not Here, Please Raise Your Hand (Four Winds, 1990), Dakos's newest collection highlights incidents taken from her teaching days-here, mostly written in the poetic voice of a girl named Penny, who, from the first day of school, realizes that her teacher is unusual. Ms. Roys has a collection of plastic hands, and she takes the class on an overnight to the museum, where they sleep beside dinosaur skeletons. She wears unusual earrings, and has a pencil cemetery. On the 100th day of school, she fills the classroom with 100 helium-filled balloons, each tied to a pencil, marker, crayon, or pen, and she has a magic wand that her students may borrow when they need to think of fresh ideas. The verses vary in length from a few lines to a few pages, and in style from rhyming couplets and quatrains to unrhymed collective poems written in the form of playlets, in a sort of verbatim conversation. Some are funny, some clever, some poignant. Small pencil cartoons decorate almost every page. Students will relate to Dakos's descriptive recollections of incidents throughout a year in one elementary classroom, and they will appreciate her understanding of children.-Susan Scheps, Shaker Heights Public Library, OH Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

School Library Journal

Dakos, an elementary-school reading specialist, offers another school-themed collection of poetry, this time describing a school year in an unusual classroom. A creative, quirky teacher-Ms. Roys-reaches her students in some extraordinary ways, with funny accessories, odd collections, and unique room decorations. A little girl named Penny is the first-person author of many of the poems; other selections come from the viewpoints of her classmates and by Ms. Roys herself. The teacher is a real personality created through the mosaic effect of the poems: she bites her nails, writes poems for her students, and thinks of all the children who have attended the school throughout the decades as benevolent ghosts floating through the building. The collection includes 46 poems, many of them very short, and a short play for three characters. Some of the poems are sing-songy, some are silly or funny, and some are thoughtful snippets of life in the elementary-school world. Teachers in second- through fourth-grade classrooms will find this a useful and amusing addition to classroom libraries. (Poetry. 7-9)

Kirkus Reviews