• Home
  • Prompt Series—FREE
  • For Writers
  • Daily Poem-Subscribe! ✨
  • Teaching Tools
  • BOOKS Etc.
  • Patron Love

Children’s Book Club: “Toasting Marshmallows: Camping Poems”

By Megan Willome 6 Comments

Kristine O'Connell George
In last month’s Children’s Book Club, we read Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne wrote this about her love for the outdoors: “The best remedy for those who are frightened, lonely or unhappy is to go outside.” This month we read poems from the perspective of a young girl who does just that. Kristine O’Connell George’s book Toasting Marshmallows: Camping Poems takes us into the interior world of a child as experienced while camping with her family.

A poet friend has been telling me about this collection of camping poems for several years, but I couldn’t find it in the library. Turns out it was on a different shelf than the other Kristine O’Connell George poetry books. I read it right before our trip west, and the dedication honors the author’s family camping trips in an orange tent to destinations that included California, Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming. The thirty poems describe a journey — an outer one and also an inner one — that happens when a child connects with the natural world.

The poems present a girl with an interior life, a girl who likes to take a Forest Walk alone. Her shared experiences with her family are subjects of many of the poems, from the setting up of “Tent” to the taking down of “Pulling Up Stakes” to the titular Toasting Marshmallows. In “Cave,” the girl explores “black passages / in this alien underground land” hand in hand with her dad.

But my favorite poems show a girl experiencing nature alone.

The Best Paths

The best paths
are whispers
in the grass,

a bent twig,
a token, a hint,
easily missed.

The best paths
hide themselves
until the right
someone
comes along.

The best paths
lead you
to where
you didn’t know
you wanted to go.

The tone of these poems is inviting, and the paintings by Kate Kiesler are idyllic. In “Sleeping Outside,” we join this child as she muses about “a small tent / staked to a huge planet” with illustrations of star-speckled pines. We visit exotic locales like “Max’s Bait Shop,” “Abandoned Cabin,” and “Old Truck,” where her imagination comes alive.

This girl is just the right age for exploring, getting dirty, discovering the wonders of things that might not sound wonderful, like mosquitoes, bees, mice, and spiders. Oh, sure, she also encounters also a doe and an owl and a moose, but part of the fun of going outside is abandoning your critter prejudices.

George’s poetry books for children (I’ve read three of them) always include a shape poem. In this collection, I like “Eavesdropping,” shaped like a crescent moon. The moon curves left instead of right, so the first line is near the middle of the page. The very shape of the poem makes the reader slow down.

Similarly, the poem “Flashlight” is actually four haiku, each spotlighted inside a family member’s flashlight beam:

Green bug on my book
pushing his long, important
shadow up the page.

Many of George’s poems take one thing and look at it in an unusual way. A pebble used for skipping is a “telegram.” In “Rowing to the Island,” a girl and her mother do just that, but the poem describes the action this way: “Such hard work, / pulling an island / across a lake.”

We don’t often give children enough time and space outdoors to do important things, like skip rocks, or pick up two — “one to keep, / one to hide / in my secret place.” Do we allow children time to sit long enough to count seventeen jays, to watch a cloud that looks like a panther, to wait “until the beetle reaches the pine” (from “By Myself”)?

Kirkus Reviews praised “Toasting Marshmallows,” saying, “The changing layout of each page gives a sense of surprise to the most ordinary of events.” The camping activities rendered as poems and illustrations in this book may be ordinary, but they are not typical. Not enough children are transformed in the presence of a “Moose Brunch,” in which the creature “halfway / between a camel and a horse, / with a bit too much of everything” munches “daintily / on wet green weeds.”

When this girl returns home, the journey stays with her. Her Flannel shirt, with its treasured camping smells, stays hidden in her bottom drawer:

where no one will find it
and wash away
my memories.
_______________
The next Children’s Book Club will meet Friday, December 14. We’ll read The Crossover by Kwame Alexander. Because it’s basketball season, y’all!

Kwame Alexander

Photo by Chris, Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Megan Willome, author of The Joy of Poetry.

Browse more Children’s Book Club

MW-Joy of Poetry Front cover 367 x 265

“Megan Willome’s The Joy of Poetry is not a long book, but it took me longer to read than I expected, because I kept stopping to savor poems and passages, to make note of books mentioned, and to compare Willome’s journey into poetry to my own. The book is many things. An unpretentious, funny, and poignant memoir. A defense of poetry, a response to literature that has touched her life, and a manual on how to write poetry. It’s also the story of a daughter who loses her mother to cancer. The author links these things into a narrative much like that of a novel. I loved this book. As soon as I finished, I began reading it again.”

—David Lee Garrison, author of Playing Bach in the D. C. Metro

Buy The Joy of Poetry Now

  • Author
  • Recent Posts
Megan Willome
Megan Willome
Author, Editor at Tweetspeak Poetry
Megan Willome is the author of The Joy of Poetry: How to Keep, Save & Make Your Life With Poems. She also writes for the WACOAN magazine, the Fredericksburg Standard Radio Post, and Magnolia Journal. When she goes to the library, she always comes home with at least one book for young people. Her day is incomplete without poetry and tea.
Megan Willome
Latest posts by Megan Willome (see all)
  • Children’s Book Club: ‘Dry’ by Neal Shusterman and Jarrod Shusterman - April 9, 2021
  • Reading Generously: ‘How to Write a Form Poem’ by Tania Runyan - April 2, 2021
  • By Heart: ‘One Art’ + New Tess Gallagher Challenge - March 26, 2021

Related

❤️✨ Sharing is caring

Filed Under: Blog, Children's Book Club, Children's Poetry, Nature Poems

About Megan Willome

Megan Willome is the author of The Joy of Poetry: How to Keep, Save & Make Your Life With Poems. She also writes for the WACOAN magazine, the Fredericksburg Standard Radio Post, and Magnolia Journal. When she goes to the library, she always comes home with at least one book for young people. Her day is incomplete without poetry and tea.

Comments

  1. Maureen says

    November 8, 2018 at 11:53 am

    ‘The Best Paths’ is a lovely poem.

    Reply
    • Megan Willome says

      November 8, 2018 at 1:12 pm

      Maureen, I thought so too. It’s simple enough for a child, even a young reader, to understand. And yet it spoke to me, a middle-aged woman.

      I was so pleased to discover the Poetry Foundation included three poems from this collection on their page about Kristine O’Connell George.

      Reply
  2. Will Willingham says

    November 10, 2018 at 11:59 am

    I camped quite a bit as an adult, but not so much as a kid. What fun these poems would have been to imagine such outings. 🙂

    Reply
    • Megan Willome says

      November 10, 2018 at 2:05 pm

      That’s what I love about this collection–it makes you want to go camping.

      Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Tweetspeak Poetry: Children’s Book Club: “Toasting Marshmallows” says:
    February 15, 2019 at 9:08 am

    […] Children’s Book Club: “Toasting Marshmallows: Camping Poems” […]

    Reply
  2. By Heart: "The Star" + New "Kindness" Challenge | says:
    June 28, 2019 at 5:02 am

    […] normally afraid of the dark seem to fear it less when they can play outside on a hot night, maybe roasting s’mores. I like to picture an adult reciting this poem to children as they eat sticky treats around a camp […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Take How to Read a Poem

Get the Introduction, the Billy Collins poem, and Chapter 1

get the sample now

Welcome to Tweetspeak

New to Tweetspeak Poetry? Start here, in The Mischief Café. You're a regular? Check out our April Menu.

Keep the World Poetic

❤️

Welcome a little patron love, when you help keep the world thoughtful and poetic.

5 FREE POETRY PROMPTS

Get 5 FREE inbox poetry prompts from the popular book How to Write a Poem

Join the Poetry Club

Join the poetry club, when you become a subscriber to Every Day Poems ✨

The classic—Now a Graphic Novel!

"Stunning, heartbreaking, and relevant illustrations"

Callie Feyen, teacher

read a summary of The Yellow Wallpaper

meet The Yellow Wallpaper characters

Recent Comments

  • Jody Collins on National Poetry Month Book Giveaway—Tell Us Your Personal Poetry Story to Enter!
  • Crystal Rowe on National Poetry Month Book Giveaway—Tell Us Your Personal Poetry Story to Enter!
  • L.L. Barkat on National Poetry Month Book Giveaway—Tell Us Your Personal Poetry Story to Enter!
  • Megan Willome on Poet-a-Day: Meet Maureen E. Doallas

Featured In

We're happy to have been featured in...

The Huffington Post

The Paris Review

The New York Observer

Tumblr Book News

Stay in Touch With Us

Categories

Learn to Write Form Poems

How to Write an Acrostic

How to Write a Ballad

How to Write a Catalog Poem

How to Write a Ghazal

How to Write a Haiku

How to Write an Ode

How to Write a Pantoum

How to Write a Rondeau

How to Write a Sestina

How to Write a Sonnet

How to Write a Villanelle

Free Printable Poet Bios

Browse all poet bios now

Shakespeare Resources

Poetry Classroom: Sonnet 18

Common Core Picture Poems: Sonnet 73

Sonnet 104 Annotated

Sonnet 116 Annotated

Character Analysis: Romeo and Juliet

Character Analysis: Was Hamlet Sane or Insane?

Why Does Hamlet Wait to Kill the King?

10 Fun Shakespeare Resources

About Shakespeare: Poet and Playwright

Top 10 Shakespeare Sonnets

See all 154 Shakespeare sonnets in our Shakespeare Library!

Explore Work From Black Poets

About Us

  • • Generous-Annual Theme 2021
  • • Our Story
  • • Meet Our Team
  • • Literary Citizenship
  • • Poet Laura
  • • Poetry for Life: The 5 Vital Approaches
  • • T. S. Poetry Press – All Books
  • • Contact Us

Write With Us

  • • 5 FREE Poetry Prompts-Inbox Delivery
  • • 30 Days to Richer Writing Workshop
  • • How to Write Form Poems-Infographics
  • • Poetry Club Tea Date
  • • Poetry Prompts
  • • Submissions

Read With Us

  • • All Our Books
  • • Best Love Poetry
  • • Book Club
  • • Charlotte Perkins Gilman Poems Library
  • • Every Day Poems
  • • Literacy Extras
  • • Literary Analysis
  • • Poems to Listen By: Audio Series
  • • Poet-a-Day
  • • Poets and Poems
  • • VerseWrights Journal
  • • William Blake Poems Arts & Experience Library
  • • William Shakespeare Sonnet Library
  • • 50 States Projects

Celebrate With Us

  • • Poem on Your Pillow Day
  • • Poetic Earth Month
  • • Poet in a Cupcake Day
  • • Poetry at Work Day
  • • Random Acts of Poetry Day
  • • Take Your Poet to School Week
  • • Take Your Poet to Work Day

Gift Ideas

  • • Give the Gift of Every Day Poems
  • • Our Shop
  • • Everybody Loves a Book!

Connect

  • • Donate
  • • Blog Buttons
  • • By Heart
  • • Shop for Tweetspeak Fun Stuff

Copyright © 2021 Tweetspeak Poetry · Site by The Willingham Enterprise · FAQ & Disclosure