"Teacher Books!"

Over the weekend, I read "Your Own, Syliva, a verse portrait of Sylvia Plath" by Stephanie Hamphill, and "The Poet Slave of Cuba, a biography of Juan Francisco Manzano" by Margarita Engle. They're fine books about poets well worth knowing.

The Plath book is classified as fiction, the Manzano with the nonfiction in biography. Both are written in verse form. While I applaud Hampill and Engle for writing these books in the form in which their subjects wrote, I wasn't sure their talent at verse accurately reflected the talent of their subjects (a daunting prospect, to be sure).

Here at the public library, we struggle to find the readers for books about poets.

When it comes down to it, we don't have as many chances to hand-sell books like these as we'd wish. Keeping them on display helps, but even then sometimes these books languish. We sometimes refer to these as "teacher books." That is, many of our teachers have a sense for which of their students would love a book like these. These teachers our best hope to get these books into these readers' hands.

I'll be part of a presentation to teachers tomorrow evening. I'll include these books--with my fingers crossed that a teacher in the audience will immediately think of the students who would be their perfect audience.