Read Aloud Today with Poem #343

Students - I wrote this poem in celebration of a special day, the first World Read Aloud Day.  Sometimes people write poems for important occasions such as birthdays, anniversaries, deaths, and all kinds of holidays.  This is what I did today.  What occasions do you have coming up in your life which might deserve some writing?

Today on World Read Aloud Day, LitWorld asks, "What would you miss most if you could not read or write?"

The poem "How the Stars Came Down" by Pat Schneider helps me answer LitWorld's question.  This poem describes a quiet and magical evening watching shooting stars, wanting not to leave camp, but having to go home to tenements, / asphalt and streetlights....  The poem ends, 

What I didn't know that night

in my bedroll at Sherwood Forest Camp

was that when I got home,

home wasn't my real home any more.

I had a new home in my remembering

and it was dark and safe and beautiful

with shooting stars still falling all around.

For me, every book, every article, every story, every poem is a "new home."  And I can visit these places in my mind and heart and soul whenever I need them.  As a mother and teacher, I believe that one of my most important responsibilities is to build such "new homes" inside of the children I meet and care for each day.  

We never know when our reality-homes will crumble for days or weeks or years, and it is good to create safe havens of words within ourselves and those we love.

Fight for Global Literacy with LitWorld, and celebrate World Read Aloud Day today by reading aloud to someone you know. 

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