To celebrate April as National Poetry Month, 8th graders browsed their home libraries and bedroom book collections for titles to stack together and create "book spine poems." First, students selected the book titles that sparked their interest and/or spoke to their heart, then searched for other choices that complemented their original picks. Next, 8th graders played with the combination of book spines, swapping and rearranging the order. As they worked to put together their poems like a puzzle in a focused and thoughtful game of trial-and-error, they explored how changing word order changes the meaning. Therefore, the hands-on activity gave 8th graders special insight into the importance and sensitivity of sentence structure! 

Since the poetry challenge took place remotely due to the ongoing COVID-19 health crisis, 8th graders found timely inspiration from online examples, like  Caught Read Handed's "The Distance Between Us" poem and Phil Shaw's "Now She Was in Quarantine" poem (However, Stephen King questioned the authenticity of the latter). 

The concept of book spine poetry appeared in 1993 with Nina Katchadourian’s "Sorted Books" project. Katchadourian began collecting interesting titles and arranging them in clusters so the spines could be read like a sentence. Maria Popova - the creator of the website, Brain Pickings - adapted the spine sentences into poetry. Book spine poems are an example of "cento" and "found" poetry! 

Read the 8th graders' "book spine poems" below. For each stack, start at the top and read down!


Author: Makayla


Author: Kaelle (Reading Hint: Add [how] before  To Kill a Mockingbird). 


Author: Sean


Author: Sophia




Author: Soraya


Author: Jaylaan


Author: Jayden