Poems in the Attic

About a month ago, I attended the Wisconsin State Reading Association conference. This is like Disney World for reading teachers--at least it is for THIS reading teacher. I have seen so many incredible teachers and writers at these events. Last year, I was able to tell Donalyn Miller that she is my idol AND I got my picture taken with her. It is safe to say I geek out a little bit. One of my favorite presentations to attend at the conference is the presentation of the best books published that year by the Cooperative Children's Book Center.

 One of the books presented was Poems in the Attic by Nikki Grimes. This book tells the story of a young girl who finds poems her mother wrote when she was a little girl in her grandmother's attic. The mother's poems tell about all the places she lived as a little girl. Her father was in the Air Force and they moved all over the word, including Alaska, North Carolina, New Mexico, and Japan. The little girl learns about her mother and responds by writing her own poems and then presents her mother with a gift of the poems she wrote as a girl along with her own poems. It is a beautiful story of family. The book switches back and forth between the mother's poems written in tanka form and the young girl's poems written in free verse.

What drew me to this book right away was the connection I have with the girl's mother. I, too, grew up as an "Air Force brat" and moved around quite a bit with my family. We moved from Michigan to Utah to Iceland to Las Vegas. I was sixteen when my father retired from the Air Force and we moved to Wisconsin. As I was listening to this book yesterday (I checked out the audio version), I was able to connect to the mother and how it felt to move and make new friends and start over. I remember exploring the grocery store in Iceland with my family and discovering a full sheep's head in the meat section. This was quite traumatic for my eight-year-old self.  We were in Iceland for almost two years, and I missed my grandma so much and wanted more than anything for her to visit. I remember starting a new school in Las Vegas and it feeling so strange that the classroom doors and hallways were outside. Weird.  My parents took us to explore our new home, no matter where it was. We explored mountains in Utah and saw the beaches in Iceland. We spent weekends at Lake Mead and walked the strip in Las Vegas.

Many people have asked me if it was hard moving around so much as a child. Sure it was sometimes, but I didn't know any different. I know there are benefits to growing up in one place and having those roots in a community, there are also great benefits to living in many places. My brother and I grew up knowing the world is a big place. We got to see different places and meet different people.  I ate kimchi when I was seven, and I used to love it when the neighbor, who was Thai, would bring fried rice over for me. And no matter where we lived, we had roots because we had our parents. They gave us special memories and experiences. I wouldn't change anything about the way I grew up. It gave me a wider world view and I wouldn't trade in those experiences for anything.