The Sun Is So Quiet

Citation

Giovanni, Nikki, and Ashley Bryan. The Sun Is So Quiet. New York: Henry Holt, 1996. 

ISBN: 0805041192

Poetic Elements

The summary of this book of poetry states that it is “a collection of poems primarily about nature and the seasons but also concerned with chocolate and scary movies”, and it is, additionally, a study in a variety of poetic elements. The poems themselves have varying rhythm patterns. Some of them are completely free verse while some follow an ABCB pattern and contain end rhyme. She uses alliteration thoughout her poetry, describing “prickled pickles” and boys as “stinky sticky slippery sweaty and sweet”. Her use of onomatopoeia in lines such as “snowflakes laughing” and “butterfly fluttering its wings...” add incredible depth to her works. Her sensory imagery is present throughout, whether it's tactile with the line “Blankets cover me when I'm asleep”, or kinesthetic with “snowflakes waltz around my ears..I twirl in rhythm to the dance”, or even auditory as she describes the wind “Whispering through...”.

Her use of figurative language is present throughout, with use of similes and heavy use of personification. One particular poem of hers describes quiet “...like the sound of a cumulus cloud floating by”, “...like a blue sky on a summer day”, and “...like a quilt on a feather bed”. She creates beautiful images with poetic phrases that describe stars that “...dance the ballet of the night...They pirouette and boogie down” and a snowflake that “...was happy and called its cousins”. Ms. Giovanni also uses repetition within her poems, either words, small phrases, or entire lines. This is present in the poem Connie with the word “...quiet”, in the poem November with the phrase “...kissing you”, and in The Stars with the line “...Occasionally they fall”.

Appeal and Overall Quality

The poems contained within this book are a wonderful study in technique, and I think that kids will appreciate the nature concepts. I found her poems to be a little more “work” for me to read, but once I did the work I could appreciate more fully what she had written. Her poetry is consistent in quality and style, especially in its lack of punctuation, the seemingly random capitalization, and the extended spacing between some lines and words. This is part of what makes her poetry so interesting. All of this comes together to represent various moods, such as the playfulness of spring, the peace that comes with sleep, the deep quiet of winter, and the wonderment of the stars in the sky.

Layout

The book follows a comfortable layout with a table of contents at the beginning and the poems themselves covering two pages each, in a combination of illustration and words layout. As stated above, Ms. Giovanni does use spacing as a technique in her poems, so they are spread out across the page, for effect, in some instances. Given that 12 of the 13 poems have been published previously it is the illustrations that give some new life and new interpretations to her words. The illustrations are done in gouache and rich tempera colors that depect African American children in various settings and serve to evoke warm feelings for the reader. While I think older students would be best suited to this book of poems, I think the younger students could appreciate the rich illustrations and poems when read by an adult with practice in reading Ms. Giovanni's poetry.

Spotlight Poem

Kisses

Flowers for hours

remain inert

but when the bees pass

they flutter and flirt

The bees come down

to steal a kiss

then off they fly

to some other miss

-Nikki Giovanni

Follow-Up Activity

I like this poem as an introduction to a science unit about insects, flowers, and pollination. It would be fun for a choral reading or for the students to act out. The words themselves sufficiently describe how pollination. From there perhaps the students could write poems about how the flowers grow with the sun's help, or how the roots grab hold in the garden. I could definitely see the incorporation of more poetry.

Reviews

"The bold, fluid lines of the gouache and tempera compositions make for a particularly eye-catching volume, just right for reeling in the read-aloud crowd and introducing them to the joys of poetry."

--Publishers Weekly

"Simple poems by the famous poet, Nikki Giovanni, are paired beautifully with colorful drawings that will pull the young reader into their magic.... A lovely first book of poems."

--Children's Literature

"The brilliant yellows, the vibrant patchwork quilts, and the shapeshifting snowflakes provide a visual feast."

--School Library Journal