Tag: squirrels

OSKAR’S VOYAGE, By Laura Purdie Salas

Welcome to Poetry Frida! This week Rose is hosting Here, at her blog Imagine the Possibilities. Thank you, Rose, for hosting!

I finally arrived home after a five week absence visiting my family and was greeted by snow upon my arrival. Not much, only an inch, but today, it is 26 degrees. Spring is holding out a little longer.

Today I received Laurie Purdie Salas‘ new picture book OSKAR’S VOYAGE! It was a Copy signed by the author and the book’s talented illustrator Kayla Harren.

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Oskar, the main character, a squirrel, is adventurous, sweet and engaging and the setting is also like another character. As Oskar leaves the comfort of his oak tree and finds himself on a Great Lakes freighter, we follow along, trying to spot him. The boat’s route is revealed on an engaging map, the first thing the reader sees after the front cover:

Tracing Oskar’s voyage through the Great Lakes will be fun for kids, and so will the boat with its various machines, the galley and even the mail bucket. Salas’ poetry will inform and entertain:

Rumble. Movement. Oskar wakes.
Climbs four stairways lined with gear. 
Pilothouse holds charts and screens:
tools to help the captain steer.

And indeed the illustrator takes the reader to the stairways and the pilothouse as we follow Oskar and try to locate him on the page, reminiscent of “Where’s Waldo.”

The back matter defines the boat terms and an interesting detailed map of this freighter, known as a “footer” because it is 1,ooo foot long. My oldest son, who loves all things maps would have loved this book.

While I was away the last five weeks, I took out my novel in verse to tweak it some more. My WIP, WHEN MY BROTHER WENT TO WAR, is historical fiction, that takes place during the Vietnam war in the year 1969-70. This is how the novel begins, in the voice of my main character Maddie.

SEWING
                                        
Just before I turned fifteen,
the end of eighth grade,
I began to stitch together 
what I knew about

my family,
my town,
and the War, too,
just like I stitch a dress
at my Singer sewing machine
on our dining room table.

except 
just before I turned fifteen
only stitching a dress
made sense.


Janice Scully 2024

I have doubts whether publishers would be interested in a book set in 1969, especially in verse. And I am told by a friend that a novel in verse as a debut novel might be a hard sell. Still reading it through, I still like it and it seems relevant in many ways, though there are no cell phones or computers. So I’ll keep trying to find a home for it. I enjoyed the process, and for me, that has meant a lot.

Well, everyone. Have a great weekend! I’ll close with a ground squirrel I encountered in Pacifica, California. A cousin of Oskar? 

Ground Squirrel on the beach
eyeing the sea and bright sun--
seeking adventure.

Janice Scully 2024

SQUIRRELS

Welcome to another Poetry Friday! We are hosted today by Linda at TeacherDance. Make sure to stop and see what poetic intrigue she is up to.

This has been another horrible week in the national news and I fear for my Asian friends and family members. How can they not feel threatened by the racial violence that is taking place, it seem, all over the country? Meanwhile the pandemic will continue for a while. I’m sure, like me, many turn to nature for some solace.

This week while walking down a street I began to notice the squirrels’ nests in the highest branches of trees. They are uncovered in the winter because leaves have fallen. They inspired a poem that I will share, but first, I discovered this poem by Amos Russel Wells who was born in Glen’s Falls, N.Y., during the Civil War. I thought his poem was charming. 

To A City-Park Squirrel
by Amos Russel Wells

 
Dear little exile from woodlands dear,
How can you keep your wilderness grace,
How can you bound so merrily here,
Shut in this narrow and formal place?

Still your fancies are forest-free,
Still as gallant you swing and glide
From dusty tree to skeleton tree
As once you roamed through the woodlands wide.

Surely you must, on a witching night,
Flee from the prisoning haunts of men,
Over the housetops take your flight,
And bathe yourself in the woods again!

It’s easy to imagine this squirrel taking flight! (Actually, I wouldn’t mind fleeing into a city, like New York, to satisfy my pandemic travel fever.) Anyway, the poem resonated with me because as I looked at the squirrels’ nests this week on my street, I began to imagine they lived in high rises. This isn’t the first time these furry and common creatures have showed up in my writing. 

SQUIRREL HIGH RISE
 

 Two round cozy nests 
 of twigs and leaves 
 in the highest branches
 of a tall tall tree,
 hovering over
 the hills and town—
 like fancy 
 penthouse apartments.
 

 There is not one window,
 none at all,
 or an elevator
 in the hall. 
 

 And squirrels don’t pay
 even the smallest fee
 for a cozy apartment
 in a high rise tree.
 
© Janice Scully 2021

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone, and enjoy the early spring. Thank you again, Linda, for hosting.