The Dream Keeper and Other Poems is beautifully illustrated by Brian Pinkey. I love how Hughes can tell a whole novel in a single poem and I confess to crying every time I read the poem The Dream Keeper to my students. What is it about this poem that touches me so? I've spent years working with inner city children and I want to be their dream keeper, to give them that "blue-cloud cloth" to protect their dreams "from the too-rough fingers of the world." It's what drew me to teaching, the desire to communicate with the next generation that if they can dream it, they can do it and that hard work and dedication will take them anywhere they want to go. This poem tugs at my deepest heartstrings.
This pull is not only for my students but for myself. Encouraging my students to reach for the stars and follow their dreams brought me to VCFA in pursuit of my own dreams. This month for my Vermont coursework, I'm embarking on a quest to delve into character. What is it about certain characters that binds me to them with the emotional impact of "The Dream Keeper?" How can authors create characters who pull our hAs a young adult, I fell in love with Phyllis Reynold Naylor's "Alice" series to the point where when Alice's boyfriend broke up with her in one novel, I got a stomachache from it. I'll be analyzing the first book in the series to study craft techniques for establishing connections between characters and readers.