Fin Pal asks Norman: "How Are You Pal?"
Norman T. Goldfish answers letters from readers. Click on the link to read his reply.
Ready to read Norman’s answer? Scroll down . . .
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Do you have a question for Norman the Goldfish—about friends, school, pets, family, life in and outside the fishbowl? Send him a letter!
Finpals ask Norman "Show Me How-to Clean a Gunky Goldfish Bowl?"
Get ready for a real peek! So many Finpals wrote asking what to do about all that Gunk! That we decided the easiest way to explain it, is to show you!
The “Gunky Bowl” scene from Not Norman, A Goldfish Story by Kelly Bennett with Noah Z. Jones (Candlewick Press)
So . . . we filmed a short video showing Kelly cleaning the gunky green stuff off the goldfish bowl so Norman and his best fish, Knot, would have a fresh, clean place to swim-swim-swim!!!
Ready to watch How-to Clean a Goldfish Bowl? Scroll down . . .
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Do you have a question for Norman the Goldfish- about friends, school, pets, family, life in and outside the fishbowl? Send him a letter!
Don’t forget to order your copy of NOT NORMAN: A GOLDFISH STORY and NORMAN: ONE AMAZING GOLDFISH!!
Poetry Challenge #228-Got My Greens
I took a parenting class once…once. I was a new mother far from family and needed help. The facilitator, Gordon, the father of six, doled out advice coated in candy, nuggets such as “perfectly normal.” And “Why would a kid want to eat green? Grass is green and dogs pee on it.”
“Why would a kid want to eat green? Grass is green and dogs pee on it.”
Happy National Green Juice Day! (celebrated every Jan 26th—definitely not Gordon’s idea.) According to National Day Calendar, Green Juice Day was declared in 2016 by Evolution Fresh, a juice making company (surprise surprise) “as a way to empower people to press ahead with their wellness resolutions by drinking a green juice.” Go Green Team are community organization working to conserve & preserve our planet from the grass up—both are good for you!
Poetry Challenge #228
Got My Greens
Take a moment—perhaps while blending up a tasty brew of kale, broccoli, spinach and honeydew…yum—and think green thoughts.
What images pop into your head when you imagine “green”? Is it trees in a shady glen? The Greenbay Packers? Dang, I forgot to take out the recycles? Green with envy, Greenbacks, or The Green Green Grass of Home ala Tom Jones?
Write a free verse poem inspired by your green imagining—with a hitch. Be free with your ideas and words, but . . . add structure to your poem by varying line lengths using a long/short or short/long pattern. The first line can be as long as you like, but the second can only have one or two words (or vice versa) and so on.
Think Green!
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Start Writing!
Don’t Think About it, just do it!
*Another “greene” worth celebrating—or not—Jan 26, 1875, George F. Greene of Kalamazoo, Michigan was granted a patent for an “electromagnetic dental tool,” the first electric drill designed for dental work.
Need green inspiration? Here are 2 favorite green picture books, Green by Laura Vaccaro Seeger and Green on Green by Dianne White and Felicita Sala.
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge 2000+ days ago. Now we take turns creating prompts to share with you. Our hope is that creatives—children & adults—will use our prompts as springboards to word play time. If you join us in the Challenge, let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole poem in the comments.
Click on Fishbowl link and sign up to receive email notifications from Kelly's blog (aka The Fishbowl):
All who subscribe, comment or share a poem will be entered in . . .
What inspires me #4 Two Thousand One Hundred Ten
Babe with Little Ray Kelly
2110 whoopee! Not talking dollars. Or baseball. Although I do love baseball. And I do have a baseball book forthcoming next spring: The House Babe Ruth Built, a celebration of Babe Ruth’s historic first homer in baseball’s first stadium, comes out Spring 2022 from Familius, just in time for the 100th anniversary of the original Yankee Stadium (more about that later).
Today I’m reposting this cat I let out of the bag 1710 days ago. PSSSSSSSST It’s been a secret! A secret-secret I’ve been doing that now, on this 2110th day, I'm Celebrating! Cue the Band!
“...be kind to your fine feathered friends/for a duck maybe some-body’s mo-th-er!”
For 2110 consecutive days, midst three moves, construction, vacations, births, goodbyes, hellos, and oh no! I have generated a poem a day.
No, I am not going to share any of my poems here, now. (You're safe...for now!}
No, I did not do it alone!
Nor would I ever have imagined getting to day 2110. That's why I'm telling you about it.
Is there something you've been meaning to try, but haven't?
Perhaps a personal goal? Maybe a resolution? Do you keep saying to yourself, as I have/do/probably will again: "I'll start next week" . . . "After the holiday, really" . . . "Tomorrow." . . Tomorrow. . . tomorrow. . . tomorrow . . . tomorrow . . . tomorrow . . .
What's the Gimmick? Gotta Have Skin in the Game.
Here's what I mean: I committed to the challenge with a friend. The rules of the game were set in writer's blood (aka "Ink"). We pledged to email or text our assignments to each other every day by midnight. Or else...
It's that "Or Else" that made the difference.
Rewards & Consequences: Some folks respond better to positive reinforcement. I've shared previously how my author-mentor-friend the late Paula Danziger bought herself pieces of amber jewelry but...gave them to her editor to hold until she met a deadline. In order to get SE Hinton to write her second novel (after The Outsiders), her then boyfriend waited each day for her to finish her pages. Others reward themselves by putting dollars into a honey pot. (Big bucks!)
Rewards do not work for me. It is too easy not to pay myself. Nor have I yet found a payoff big enough (and attainable) to entice me to do anything...and I mean An-ny-thing!
I need Consequences, penalties, shame. That's what motivates me. Deadlines with consequences. So, in order to insure that I'd stick with the challenge, I set a penalty a miserable embarrassing consequence. I pledge to complete each days prompt and send it to Cindy by midnight. If failed I vowed to donate $50 to Trump's campaign publically--on Facebook. Pre-election that was the stiffest-realistic-penalty I could imagine. One I was not willing to pay and so, I did the work Every. Single. Day. Here's the 1-2-3 of it:
Set a "realistic" Goal
Set a "clear" Consequence or Reward
Set a Timer (The secret ingredient!) Cindy and I devoted 7 1/2 minutes each day to complete the prompts. That's it 7 1/2 minutes. Read. Set Timer. Go.
I was amazed at what we accomplished in 7 1/2 minutes. GDC: a concrete GOAL, a set DEADLINE, and a CONSEQUENCE for not meeting that deadline was exactly the motivation I needed to stick with the journal, especially through those first couple of days, then weeks, and vacations, and late nights, and yucky prompts. The answer is YES I CAN!
Tomorrow is here. 2110 down, more to go!
Celebrating 2103 Playlist:
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Fin Pal asks Norman "How Did You Write That?"
WOW! That’s a good question. It’s a question lots of kids ask. The truth is, Norman didn’t write the picture book Not Norman, A Goldfish Story. Kelly wrote it. She also wrote Norman One Amazing Goldfish about the day Norman’s human entered him in Pet-O-Rama.
Norman is a made-up goldfish in her story. Norman is also a goldfish that lives at Kelly’s house. But, let me ask you: while Norman the goldfish is swimming around in his bowl, might he be imagining stories?
Ready to read Norman’s answer? Scroll down . . .
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Say kids:
If Norman did sneak out of his fishbowl, where do you think he would go? What would he do?
If Norman’s idea sparks a story in you, share it with us here! We’d love to read it. And, who knows, your story could become a book, too!
Happy Creating!
P.S Norman did write a story about how he got his human. It’s called Not Curtis! to read it, click!
Do you have a question for Norman the Goldfish—about friends, school, pets, family, life in and outside the fishbowl? Send him a letter!
Poetry Challenge #227-Popcorn
I’m missing movie popcorn: light, airy, crunchy, salty, buttery bites that grease up your dry skin. Mmmmm! And makes movie-watching oh so tasty!
The first single pops that grow faster and faster until clouds of popped corn flow over the sides of the pan.
Those red and white striped cardboard containers that pop into shape. Or the waxed bags filled until one more piece can’t balance. The smell! The taste!
Poetry Challenge #227
Movie Popcorn
Think of something you miss. Maybe it’s a favorite food. Maybe it’s summer since it’s January. Maybe it’s the sun on a cloudy day. Maybe it’s a friend or relative or pet.
Whatever it is, write an acrostic poem about it using the letters POPCORN as the first letters for your seven lines.
Be descriptive. Make your reader miss the thing too.
“Each acrostic poem has a topic idea running down the left side of the poem. Each letter in the topic word has a new thought that runs off the side from left to right and is relevant to the topic word. The topic word is typically the title as well.”—definition and examples on KidZonePoetry
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Start Writing!
Don’t Think About it, just do it!
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge 2000+ days ago. Now we take turns creating prompts to share with you. Our hope is that creatives—children & adults—will use our prompts as springboards to word play time. If you join us in the Challenge, let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole poem in the comments.
Click on Fishbowl link and sign up to receive email notifications from Kelly's blog (aka The Fishbowl):
All who subscribe, comment or share a poem will be entered in . . .
What Inspires Me #3: MLK, the Biggest Dreamer
Martin, “Martin” of the song, “Martin” of the movement, “Martin” our hope for a kinder country.
Martin Luther King Jr. was as human as all of us, and as vulnerable (and maybe fearful, too.) The difference, is that MLK dared to dream big, big dreams. Dreams for himself, for his family, and the biggest—for us, humanity.
Jan 17, 2022 is Martin Luther King day, a national holiday set aside to honor the man—and most importantly his dream for the world with hopes that we will listen and strive toward it.
On August 28, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech, at the Lincoln Memorial. Below is the recording courtesy of NPR.
Fin Pal asks Norman an Earful
Norman T. Goldfish answers letters from readers. Click on the link to read his reply.
