Books

20 projectable writing lessons – easy to follow – complete lessons or a great jumping off point for teachers looking for engagement strategies for their writing instruction. Applicable across the curriculum.

“Leave it to Sara Holbrook and Michael Salinger to come up with a resource that allows kids to be the diverse group of individuals they can and want to be—and at the same time paves a route for them to meet the Common Core Standards. . . . I really wish I had written this resource. Having read it, it is tough not to be jealous.”
– Stephanie Harvey, Coauthor of Strategies That Work, Second Edition

Call it poetic justice, but not only is performance poetry the hottest, hippest way for students to engage in literate behaviors, it’s also an effective vehicle for helping students meet language arts standards. In fact, poetry performance meets eight of NCTE and IRA’s twelve national standards for English instruction and contributes to the mastery of the other four. Best of all, it works in any setting, and with Outspoken! you’ll learn how the spoken word can rev up the energy in your classroom while achieving your curricular goals.

Any teacher who has challenged a sunny day with the phrase “vocabulary lesson” only to see a dark cloud descend over the room knows that students can be downright word resistant. Break out of the vocab doldrums once and for all with High Definition, a whole new approach to vocabulary instruction that’s not just effective, but energizing, sociable, and fun.

“This is kids’ ticket into an utterly different kind of vocabulary learning-an energy-juiced, falling in love with words. I wish I were back in school again, and my teacher had read this book.” – Ellin Oliver Keene

Are you searching for instruction that reinforces standards-based content in language arts, math, science, or social studies?

• That generates student interest?
• That promotes critical thinking?
• That doesn’t sacrifice time in your curriculum?

Then it’s time for a new approach.

In Practical Poetry, Sara Holbrook shows you how the precise language and keen observations of poems can be used as nuts-and-bolts tools for addressing content and language standards in four key subject areas.

Take a wild ride with poet Sara Holbrook as she guides young writers in performing their poetry with style and pizzazz. With enthusiasm and a touch of irreverence, Ms. Holbrook, a performance poet herself, explains how to use voice, rhythm, attitude, movement, and other techniques to perform poetry in a group, duo, or solo. More than thirty poems are included for young readers to practice, as well as instructions for putting on a poetry jam at school or in the community.

Lessons and standardized tests are well known for their focus on vocabulary words that students should know. Terms such as capricious, equivocal, mitigate, and instigate can be baffling and nerve-racking to young adults, especially when they need to demonstrate their knowledge in the classroom or on an exam. Poet Michael Salinger defuses the tension by offering his own tongue-in-cheek definitions that students will surely commit to memory. Giving each word a personality all its own, Salinger creates mini story lines and amusing images, full of wit and irony, that will keep readers chuckling. Cartoonist Sam Henderson’s hilarious drawings add to the fun.

This entertaining and quirky collection of school poems covers everything from a “slam-dancing ride” on the big yellow bus to the teacher who picks up signals with “antennae in her hair” to a full-on zombie invasion. Sidebars introduce readers to many elements of poetry and invite kids to write poems of their own.

Poetry that pokes, prods and punches its way right to the heart of friendship. Celebrated performance poet Sara Holbrook shows readers that a good poem is like a good friend, “something to keep close, never lose, or leave behind at a bus stop.” This collection of forty-four poems explores the territory of friendship with a hard-edged honesty rare in children’s poetry. From schoolmates to teammates, pets to pests, Holbrook explores the heart—and the heartache—of friendship.

Teenage love explored from his and her points of view. From the first furtive looks across the classroom to the blossom of new romance and the final flameout, teenage love is loaded with awkwardness, uncertainty, dreams, conflict, and pure bliss. Poets Sara Holbrook and Allan Wolf combine their considerable talents to explore these feelings and struggles by creating the voices of a girl and boy in the throes of affection. As they experience the giddiness of love, the poems’ two characters also face obstacles (parents) and distractions (friends) while learning to respect each other’s interests and needs. Can this relationship survive? In sonnets, tankas, villanelles, and other poetic forms, Holbrook and Wolf examine the efforts of two teenagers who dare to be more than friends.

Here is Sara Holbrook’s award winning collection of poems defining various vocabulary words. (First published by Boyd’s Mills Press) reissued as a Head’s Up and project-able product with a few extras thrown in.

The idea behind Heads Up is to get students eyes up and out of the books and looking at the projected work where you can see and encourage their engagement.

We think it’s a good idea and hope you do too!

In these four collections of verse (The Dog Ate My Homework, I Never Said I Wasn’t Difficult, Am I Naturally This Crazy? and Which Way to the Dragon!), Sara Holbrook deals honestly with issues facing adolescents: school, divorce, anger, violence, love, friendship, and self-esteem. Through her straight-talk style, Holbrook captures the joys, pains, and attitudes that preteens and teenagers feel and provides a message of understanding that readers will appreciate.

In these four collections of verse (The Dog Ate My Homework, I Never Said I Wasn’t Difficult, Am I Naturally This Crazy? and Which Way to the Dragon!), Sara Holbrook deals honestly with issues facing adolescents: school, divorce, anger, violence, love, friendship, and self-esteem. Through her straight-talk style, Holbrook captures the joys, pains, and attitudes that preteens and teenagers feel and provides a message of understanding that readers will appreciate.

The collection in the words of the author: “There are never just one or two sides to any story, but dozens. This book is the culmination of thousands of conversations with folks who took the time to tell me their sides. I took a lot of notes and have revised, revisited, and robbed this manuscript over the last 20 years.”

Salinger’s writing is like a bear in the kitchen, tearing into the tender truth of everyday life with unpredictable swipes from sharp linguistic claws “capable of ripping through a refrigerator’s skin.” A grappling hook in a stingray, a red-tailed hawk on a bark covered fence post, an outdated pack of Twizzlers – Salinger describes familiar images with “the choreographed precision of slow motion pistons,” scientifically accurate and unsentimentally clear.

“Sara Holbrook continually works miracles by giving substance to steam–in these keepsake poems she is matriarch, mojo and mind-bender, guiding us toward insight with an unerring hindsight.

It is not important whether you discover Sara through her electrifying performance work or through these gems of humor, heart and lyricism. What’s important is that you discover her, this wondrous wordsmith, one of the reasons poetry has a pulse again.”

– Patricia Smith, Boston Globe Columnist, Four Time National Poetry Slam Champion

Poetry. Prose.

“Sara Holbrook’s book is like a Japanese fan unfolding-with bound-breaking poems and essays, we watch the picture form before us of a poet’s life; of lessons taught, and lessons learned. There is a tough sweetness, or a sweet toughness, to these stories, that allows us a personal and poetic look into a world that is both private and universal”
– Sarah Willis

Isn’t She Ladylike? combines poetry with black and white snapshots from the childhood of the noted performance poet and author the poetry collection Chicks Up Front. Sara Holbrook has also written eight books for children and teens.