Book Spine Poems

What You Need:

• Shelves of books
• A digital camera
• Printer
• Scissors
• Paper
• Glue

What You Do:

1. Pick a shelf or set of shelves and study the book spines. Is there a group of books that would work well together? Sometimes you can find a group of books on a common theme.
2. As you find titles that might work, photograph the spines. Be sure to photograph a combination of short titles and longer titles so that you have a variety of material to use to create the poem.
3. Print off your photos and cut out the book spines.
4. Arrange your titles. With a book spine poem, rewriting means rearranging. Try the lines in a different order. How does this change the poem’s meaning?
5. When your poet is happy with his poem, glue down the titles. Now he has a poem to share with one and all.

For a fun twist, include DVDs or gaming boxes. Mix and match the different titles to create a delightfully original stacked poem.