And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.”
—Roald Dahl
As children we had only dipped our tiny toes in the world, yet felt that everything and anything was possible. We believed in magic.
My mother’s favorite book as a child was Charles Kingsley’s The Water-Babies. Her childhood was bleak, so the idea that little living beings existed in every stream and river was a lovely thought and comfort. The book traveled with her over many years and through continents, its original book jacket fragile but still intact, the pages worn and stained from being read so many times.
Even when life isn’t as hard as it was for my mother, existence itself can become mundane or stressful. All the more reason to believe in the magical things that lift our spirits and draw a smile to our faces! So, let’s enter imaginary worlds through reading. And let’s tell stories to children (or listen to their stories). Take a walk in the woods and explore underneath the leaves, twigs, and rocks. Understand that mushrooms are umbrellas for mice. Look for magic and miracles every day.
Try It: Magical Poetry
Do you believe in magic? If so, write a poem about a magical experience, a favorite story, or someone in your life who adds magic.
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Featured Poem
Thanks to everyone who participated in last week’s poetry prompt. Here’s a poem from Monica we enjoyed:
Grocery List
Subversive act calculated
to overthrow the tyrannous
boredom of a chore:
grocery store items
scrawled in a dull, numb rush.
In black ball-point,
a clandestine addition
penned in stealth
there under butter,
milk, eggs, sneaking
mirth into the list:
MAKE SURE TO SMILE!
And I buy it.
Photo by Se Re, Creative Commons via Flickr.
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Browse poetry teaching resources
How to Write a Poem uses images like the buzz, the switch, the wave—from the Billy Collins poem “Introduction to Poetry”—to guide writers into new ways of writing poems. Excellent teaching tool. Anthology and prompts included.
“How to Write a Poem is a classroom must-have.”
—Callie Feyen, English Teacher, Maryland
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Donna says
I’ve been thinking about the child’s ability to believe in magic. What a beautiful, pure faith in the unseeable. I feel poetry is part magic… except for when it is entirely so. I’m looking forward to the poems yet to come, right here… Thanks Heather!