(portrait of Phillis Wheatley by Gina Moats)

I simply adored the true story of the poet Phillis Wheatley ("Phillis's Big Test") in this month's Spider. Phillis is a shining example of courage, talent, and persistence in the face of great hardship. Here are a few of my favorite lines from Phillis's poetry.

Excerpt from “On Imagination” (1773):

Imagination! who can sing thy force?
Or who describe the swiftness of thy course?

Excerpt from “On Being Brought from Africa to America” (1773):

Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
"Their colour is a diabolic die."
Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain,
May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train.

Excerpt from “To His Excellency General George Washington” (1775)

Proceed, great chief, with virtue on thy side,
Thy ev’ry action let the goddess guide.

A crown, a mansion, and a throne that shine,

With gold unfading, WASHINGTON! be thine.

Ah . . . isn’t nature wonderful? I can’t think of a better home than The Great Woods. Lounging in the grass, sleeping under the stars—it's pure paradise.

In this month’s Spider, I simply adored the poem “I Say to the Sun” (page 12). I’ve had more than a few intelligent conversations with the sun and moon myself. (But I still seek the answer to one burning question: WHY must the sun get so hot? It makes my perfectly smooth green shell absolutely crispy!)

I think the spirit of nature guided me to this lovely book of nature poems. The poem “Look!” reminded me of my long-ago adventures in Africa—filled with cassava leaves and exotic fruit! I also enjoyed “Riddle Me Day,” a traditional Albanian nature riddle:

It rolls over rock, and never gets torn
It runs through the bush untouched by the thorn
It falls into water, but cannot sink down
It dives in the sea, yet cannot drown.

Do you know the answer? (Hint: It's making me crispy right now!)

I love sharing my wisdom every issue in "Ophelia's Last Word." But being the oldest and wisest buggy in the magazine can be a lot of pressure for one grasshopper. Sometimes I daydream about a more carefree life—I could play pranks like Spider, try out acrobatic stunts like Sonya, or just wiggle adorably like Thistle. 

When I read the Juan Bobo stories in this month's Spider, I was pleased to discover the section about "noodleheads"—characters known for making silly mistakes. That's it, I thought! I must get in touch with my noodlehead side.

So I searched my library for stories about other noodleheads and found this book of Turkish folktales about a character named Hoja (sometimes spelled "Hodja"). Hoja may appear to be silly and foolish, but his words contain a hidden wisdom. In my favorite tale, "Pumpkins and Walnuts," Hoja sits beneath a walnut tree. He thinks nature made a terrible mistake in forcing enormous pumpkins to grow from the ground, while puny walnuts are allowed to sprout from a tall, mighty tree. But when a walnut hits him squarely on the head, he decides that maybe nature was right after all. (Would you rather get hit on the head with a pumpkin or a walnut?)

What I've learned from these tales is that silly doesn't mean stupid, and that wisdom comes in all shapes, sizes, and senses of humor. I treasure my position as the oldest and wisest buggy, and I'll continue to share my wisdom, but don't be surprised to see a glimpse of Ophelia the Noodlehead every now and then!

My, reading the poem “April Rain Song” in this month’s Spider reminded me of how beautiful the sound of rain can be! I love to sit inside on rainy days and listen to the pitter-patter of raindrops on the roofs and pavement—it’s almost like poetry itself. This book is full of lovely rainy day poetry for all seasons. My favorite is an autumn poem called “Mist and All,” which begins like this:

I like the fall,
The mist and all.
I like the night owl’s
Lonely call—
And wailing sound
Of wind around.

Isn’t that beautiful? There are several poems for each season, and each has a different perspective on rain. Whether you’re dreaming of summer or missing the crisp fall, this book will be perfect for those days when you're stuck inside, waiting out the warm April showers.

Have you ever heard the expression “March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb?” It means that we’re in for some brisk, blustery days before the calm of spring settles in. Those windy March days seem to always whirl up feelings of travel and excitement in me! You read in this month’s Spider about how the wind carried Samuel Peppard and his friends clear across the country in his wind wagon (“Samuel Peppard and the Wind Wagon”). In this book, the wind picks up a plastic bag that has been thrown away in a landfill and takes it on a journey of its own.

The book's wonderful illustrations show that ordinary, everyday things can be beautiful—even a plastic bag floating in the wind. Each person who sees the bag grabs it and uses it for something different. As it turns out, the bag has a lot more purpose than the person who threw it away could ever imagine.

This book has reminded me to stop and think before I throw something away. In fact, I’m feeling so inspired I think I’ll set up a recycling center for everybuggy right here in the magazine! Now Spider will finally have somewhere to take all of his empty hairspray bottles. . . .

In the United States, we celebrate President’s Day in honor of our country’s presidents. It always falls on the third Monday in February, right between the birthdays of two of our most famous presidents—Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. You read in this month’s Spider about George Washington, but how much do you know about the other presidents? With February upon us, now is as good a time as any to brush up on your presidential history!

This book tells you about each of the presidents, all the way up to number 44: Barack Obama. On each page there is a different president and a rhyme about his time in office. My personal favorite is Thomas Jefferson (number three) who “rigged the sale of the century” when he made the Louisiana Purchase, adding more states to the United States of America. The rhymes and pictures make it both easy and fun to learn about what each president accomplished!

I think I'll spend my President’s Day with a good book, a cup of tea, and a break from all these bickering buggies. I, for one, can appreciate how difficult it must be to keep an entire country in order—I can hardly keep things peaceful inside the magazine!

In this issue of Spider, you read about how different cultures use drums to tell stories unique to their people (“Listen to the Story of the Drum”). Much like poetry, drumbeats can create a whole new language, one that is understood by hearing different tones and rhythms. Sometimes Miro gets frustrated because he can’t speak English as well as his native French. But the language of the drum is universal—it allows people of different cultures to understand one another.

In this book, each chapter features a different culture’s tale about the origin of the drum. My favorite story in the book is from Haiti, a small island country in the Caribbean, called “The Elephant King’s Drum.” It's about a man who promises to bring his father the drum of the elephant king. Along the way, Brize gives some food to a blind man, a lame man, and an old man. As a reward for his kindness, a priest of vodou tells him where the elephants live and gives him magic nuts to protect himself. Brize finds the drum and brings it back to his father, but the final magic nut makes the drum explode into many smaller drums and the elephant king into the many drummers of Haiti.

Each story begins with an introduction that explains the different drum tones and rhythms found within the story. If you pay attention to these rhythms as you read, you may notice their musical language. Sigh—wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could all speak to each other through music?

I often need to calm Sonya down when people mistake her for a dragonfly. “I am not a dragonfly,” she says. “I am a damselfly, and damselflies are much prettier.” (I understand her irritation, but I must admit—dragonflies and damselflies look awfully similar!)

What if you were a big hairy bear, but everyone told you that you were just “a silly man who needs a shave and wears a fur coat”? How annoying! In The Bear that Wasn’t, a bear goes to sleep in a nice warm cave for the winter. (That sounds cozy, doesn’t it? A long nap in a quiet place, away from squabbling buggies . . . sounds lovely to me!) But this bear has a rather rude awakening—humans have built a factory over his cave! The forest is gone! The grass is gone! The trees are gone! The flowers are gone! Even worse, the factory workers don’t believe him when he says he’s a bear!

Our extremely confused bear ends up working at the factory. In time, he starts to believe that he is just a “silly man who needs a shave.” When he finally leaves the factory, he doesn’t even think he’s allowed to hibernate anymore—after all, “silly men” don’t sleep through the winter! Will he ever remember who he really is? I certainly hope so. Can you imagine trying to reason with a bear who's not getting enough sleep?

Fall has arrived! With the crisp autumn winds and the leaves bursting into color, who can resist the charms of the season? Lately I’ve been reading a bundle of autumn books to keep me firmly in a fall mood. My favorite is Crow Call, a touching tale of a father and his daughter, Liz, who are reunited after World War II. One fall morning Liz joins her father on a hunt, and she gets to use her father’s “crow call” to bring the crows to them. (Don’t worry—they don’t shoot!) There is one particularly magical moment where the two are simply surrounded by crows.

The illustrations in this book are fantastic. You can practically feel the wind and hear the crows as you read! My favorite is the picture of little Liz buying a man’s plaid hunting shirt, which her father says is “a very practical thing to do” because she “will never ever outgrow” it. As a special treat, on the very last page, you’ll find an adorable photograph of the author as a child wearing her men’s plaid hunting shirt! It goes right down past her knees! (Do you think they make plaid shirts for praying mantises?) 

It’s the most wonderful time of the year—back to school! But to my great confusion, Spider tells me that some children actually dread heading back to the classroom! (As a lover of learning, I was simply mystified by this information!)

If you're literally counting the days till next summer, you'll adore this unique book of poems, riddles, and puzzles. It keeps you counting from day one to "school’s out!" with a poem for every school day. If you stick to the schedule and read one poem per day, you’ll come across festive poems at the right time of year (Halloween, Kwanzaa, Easter, Ramadan, President’s Day, and many more). Or perhaps you'll love the book so much that you'll zip through all 180 poems in one sitting! I must warn you, however, that speed reading will not zip you through to the last day of school!