"Lemonade and Other Poems Squeezed from a Single Word" by Raczka

43 pages

This is a collection of all kinds of poems--funny to serious--each of which is composed using only the letters from the title. Here's one of my favorites, as an example:

"Earthworms"

a short storm

worms here

worms there

wear shoes

I love the idea of rearranging the letters to make a poem! It takes a lot of creativity and makes the poetry feel clever and fun. This book would be great for an older-kids program, as they could read the book and then write their own "fresh-squeezed" poems.

Lemonade: And Other Poems Squeezed From A Single Word

2011/43 pgs

About the Book: Poetry can be squeezed from one single word. Taking one word and rearranging the letters, Bob Raczka creates poems ranging from funny to serious in a fantastic poetry collection.

Sarah Teenlibrarian Says: Lemonade has library program for tweens written all over it! I first heard about this book during a upcoming book release webcast and knew I had to get my hands on it. I'm a big fan of Raczka's book, Guyku, and I was intrigued with the idea of taking one word and creating a poem.

The poems are fantastic! I love the layout of the book which lets the reader see how the poems were made and what letters were used. On the next page, the actual poem appears. This would a be a great tween program and I plan on using it in the writer's workshop programs I run for tweens and teens.

Sometimes it is a bit of a stretch to make the poem make sense, but it's the creativity that really counts for me. I loved it and I hope we get more Lemonade poems soon!

While I loved several of the poems, I think Vacation is my favorite:

Vacation:
Action
In
A
Van-
Bob Raczka, from Lemonade, 2011