The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo presents a poem about how the speaker differs from her best friend, then shifts to a poem that asks big questions about love and sex, and then to a poem focused on the speaker’s feelings the night before she begins high school. The poems may be clearly linear, but if they are not, the lack of explanation as to sequence can be thought-provoking in itself. Alternatively, in Amber McBride’s Me (Moth), students can trace and analyze the moth motif that is intricately woven throughout the novel, appearing as references to eggs, caterpillars, cocoons, dusty wings, and moths, as well as in contrast to butterflies.īeyond analyzing literary devices, novels in verse also ask readers to link the poems into a narrative. In that same excerpt from Garvey’s Choice, for example, stronger readers might wonder why the line breaks so suddenly after “Dad,” or about the potential symbolism of that Star Trek lunch box. Readers might become more attuned to stylistic choices, such as structure and use of figurative language, than when they are reading larger chunks of prose. For stronger readers, the novel in verse may highlight literary elements that a prose novel may not. The brevity of the novel in verse does not detract from its sophistication, however. Instead, Dad/ bought one blaring the logo/ of some football team/ I’d never even heard of.” Spock,/ a Star Trek lunch box/ was all I craved. Also, conflicts and themes that may take several chapters to develop in a prose novel are sometimes distilled into a poem, or even a single passage in a novel in verse.įor example, the opening poem of Garvey’s Choice, by Nikki Grimes, immediately establishes the central conflict between the speaker and his father: “When I was seven/ and crazy for Mr. The struggling reader appreciates the abundance of white space and the opportunity to move through a novel at a quicker pace than usual. The novel in verse appeals to a wide variety of readers. Why does the novel in verse deserve a place in your collection, and how can it be incorporated into the classroom? The novel in verse, or a story told in a series of poems as opposed to prose, is witnessing an explosion in popularity and publication.
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