If you are like me, you’ve never heard of a Spine Story (or Poem) before. I hadn’t until I read Erica’s wonderful children’s blog “What Do We Do All Day?” about a Summer Literacy BINGO game.
In the game, some of the squares were titled; learn a new song, finish a crossword puzzle, read a book outside, listen to an audiobook, and write a comic strip. As the the kids do each thing, they cross off the square. Five in a row means a BINGO win.
The square that caught my eye was, create a spine poem.
I’d never heard of a spine poem before so I clicked on a link to her page that explained them. Of course, if you’ve viewed the photos in this post, you will already know what one is. I call them stories instead of poems. A real challenge would be to do a Haiku poem in Spines.
I’ve yet to create one myself, but by the end of this post, I promise to put one together to share. Meanwhile, here are a few in Erica’s post.
(In case you can’t read the above Spines, they say “How to Write Poetry” “Brainstorm” “Where do You Get Your Ideas?” “All the world.”)
At the end of her blog on Spine Poems, she added a link to 100 Scope Notes which had a slew more of these poems/stories, titled “2013 Book Spine Poem Gallery”. There are other years of galleries available too. Lots of laughs and some really good Aligned Spines.
Okay, here are a few I tried. (haha) It was actually more fun than I thought. Once I’d done two, I saw many more possibilities!
Now it’s your turn.
Gather some of the books on your shelves or TBR stacks and try to create a few stories or poems? I’d love to see a photo, or just write the titles in your comment below. Hey, you are very talented storysmiths. Let’s see what story you can tell… from your bookcase? Create a cool, scary, funny, mysterious, clever, or romantic “aligned spines” story.
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Erica’s Literacy Bingo page: https://www.whatdowedoallday.com/reading-bingo-for-kids/
Erica’s Spine Poetry page: https://www.whatdowedoallday.com/spine-poetry-activity-for-kids/
100 Scope Notes Book Spine Galleries: https://100scopenotes.com/2013/04/02/2013-book-spine-poem-gallery/
The Writers in Residence 