Turn and Talk

• Tell your partners your favorite genre i.e. humor, fantasy, realistic fiction etc.
• As a team, decide on one genre in the fiction section to visit first.

Genre Stack

• Pull a title of a book that already sounds “poetic” and might work as a good title.
• Scan for titles that look expressive & use descriptive language, alliterations, repetition, synonyms, antonyms or interesting vocabulary.
• Pull a few titles more titles.
• Go to another fiction genre or the picture book section and pull a few more titles.

Experiment

• Stand at a bookshelf and experiment with the arrangement of your titles.
• Stack the spine titles so that the titles are like the lines of a poem.
• Revise by rearranging the titles until you have a stack of books that sounds like a poem. 
• Try to include:  alliteration, synonyms, antonyms.
• Challenge:  add a simile or metaphor.

Back to the Stacks

Once you begin creating your poem, you might need more books…When you return to the stacks, you might look for figurative language, specific phrases or interesting vocabulary.

Experiment

• Rearrange the spine titles so that the titles are like the lines of a poem.
• Move the books to change the order of the titles until you find the arrangement that sounds the best.

Publish

• Take a photo of your finished poem.
• Leave your book spine poem on display for other patrons to read!

I can’t wait to see what you come up with!

Example stack that might inspire a poem that includes interesting words & vocabulary, alliteration and repetition:

Example Poem

Mind Games

Hold fast,

the danger box,

Things not seen,

In darkness death,

A whole nother story.

(Common Core Standards:  CCSS 4.5a, 4.5c)