Page intentionally blank AC ROS T IC POE M S B Y L I S A M . B O L T S I M O N S I L L U S T R A T E D B Y K A T H L E E N P E T E L I N S E K About the Author Published by The Child’s World® 1980 Lookout Drive • Mankato, MN 56003-1705 Lisa M. Bolt Simons is a writer 800-599-READ • www.childsworld.com and a teacher. She has published more than ten books for children. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS She has also been awarded grants The Child’s World®: Mary Berendes, Publishing Director and awards for her writing. Besides Red Line Editorial: Editorial direction writing, teaching has been her The Design Lab: Design and production passion for 20 years. She lives in Photographs ©: Thinkstock, 7 (left); Fuse/Thinkstock, 7 Minnesota with her husband and (right); Jose Manuel Gelpi Diaz/Thinkstock, 13; Sebastian boy/girl twin teenagers. Her Web site Crocker/Shutterstock Images, 18 www.lisamboltsimons.com is . Copyright © 2015 by The Child’s World® About the Illustrator All rights reserved. No part of this book may be Kathleen Petelinsek is a graphic reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means without written permission from the publisher. designer and illustrator. She has been designing and illustrating books for ISBN 9781631436925 children for 20 years. She lives in LCCN 2014945435 Minnesota with her husband, two dogs, a cat, and three fancy chickens. Printed in the United States of America Mankato, MN November, 2014 PA02240 A C R O S T I C P O E M S TA B L E O F C O N T E N T S C H A P T E R O N E What Is a Poem? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4 C H A P T E R T W O Descriptive Acrostics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 C H A P T E R T H R E E Story Acrostics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Tips for Young Poets ...............22 Glossary ...........................23 To Learn More .....................24 Index ..............................24 A C R O S T I C P O E M S P T E R A O H N C 1 E What Is a Poem? Have you sung a song at a birthday party? Did you know you were singing a poem? Think about cards people buy for special occasions. Many cards have poems inside. Poems are a special kind of writing. They have been around for thousands of years. Poems can be long or short. Some poems are only a few words. Others are as long as a book! 4 Several things make poems different from other kinds of writing. Most writing uses sentences. But poems use lines. A sentence has a complete thought. It also has punctuation. A line doesn’t have to be a complete thought. Lines also don’t need punctuation. Sometimes a whole poem has no punctuation! 5 Poets think very hard about the sounds the words in their poems make. Sometimes poets use words that rhyme. Rhyming words have the same ending sound. The flower power dog words and rhyme. So do frog and . p o w e r fro g d o g f l o w e r 6 The word mouse has one syllable. Ze-bra has two. Clap along as you say a word to hear the syllables. All poems have rhythm. This is the pattern of sounds in a poem. The syllables in a line help decide a poem’s rhythm. Syllables are the sounds that make up a word. Some syllables are stressed. They are spoken more strongly. Other syllables are unstressed. They HOUSE are spoken more softly. The word has one BIRD-house stressed syllable. has two syllables. The first one is stressed. 7 G EsmcgieRaontochcedie vaa aillnliyztrd e a atito n E C E W H AT I S A N A C R O S T I C P O E M ? Acrostics are one form of poetry. Poets pick a special word when they write acrostics. Each letter of the word begins a line of the poem. The lines of the poem are about that word. Acrostics have been around for thousands of years. They were probably first written in ancient Greece. People used them to share predictions about future events. 8