Poetry Book Form Your Name: Alma Gutierrez Perez

Book Title:
Rhyolite The True Story Of A Ghost Town Author: Diane Siebert
Publisher: Jacket illustrations Date: 2003

EVALUATE THE BOOK USING THE FOLLOWING ELEMENTS

1. TYPE OF POETRY​​ – Explain the type(s) of interesting poem(s) in the book (narrative,
lyric, humorous, free verse etc.) Explain with examples from the book.
Explain and give examples:
The poem is a narrative. It is also in stanzas composed of couplets. It tells the story of how the Nevada
town of Rhyolite was started, grew, and how it became a ghost town.
(So, filled with hope, this lucky pair
Decided on a piece of ground
Where they could mine what they had found,
While from a distance, wild and free,
The coyotes saw what coyotes see.)
2. SUBJECT OF THE POEM(S)​​ Explain the interesting topics and new perspectives the
poems share with the children. Provide 3 examples.
1. ​The beginning of a town. (In the desert, out of sight, rests the town of Rhyolite. Where, back in
nineteen hundred four. Two prospectors in search of ore. Unloaded from their burros’ backs, their
shovels, picks, supply-filled packs, and digging, watched their dreams unfold: Eureka! They’d
discovered gold!)
2. ​How people work together to help a town grow. (Investors watched this booming town. And
shrewdly lais their money down, financing projects, funding schemes. Of those whose hearts were
heaped with dreams. And oh, The people’s dreams were grand! For as they gazed upon the land. They
mapped and measured, taking stock. Of wealth beneath volcanic rock. The rock was known as
“rhyolite.”)
3. ​Why some people have to leave a town. (And as folks drifted out of sight, the curtain fell on
Rhyolite a town undone, its lifeblood drained. For years a stubborn few remained. Tenacious, hanging
by a thread. Their dreams, by nineteen nineteen, dead.)

3. LANGUAGE ​–Explain how the poems encourages children to play with words and
expand their imaginations. Provide 4 examples
1. The rhyming of words is fun like this“Eight hundred children, stood unused. The coyotes sat and
watched, amused.” (page 24) The need to continue reading and find out what happens next.
2. The humor in the story “ While under wide Nevada skies. The coyotes watched with laughing
eyes.” The idea of coyotes finding us amusing is silly and fun to a child.
3. The story is easy to understand and follow along. “They danced for joy, they laughed and yelled,
amazed at what the desert held; the ore, it seemed, was everywhere!” It’s easy for children to
follow along and envision what is happening.
4. PERSONAL CONNECTIONS –Explain how the poems create an emotional response
for the child that encourages repeated readings. Explain with examples from the
poems.
Explain with examples: From the beginning the rhyming words are captivating. “In the desert, out
of sight. Rests the town of Rhyolite” The child will want to know more about this town called
Rhyolite.
 5. ILLUSTRATION​​ – visual elements, design, page layout, word placement, art and/or
photography. Choose a 2-page spread and evaluate illustration with the following:
Visual elements: line, shape, texture, color.
Line: ​There are thick lines that outline important pictures of bricks, buildings, the moon, and a coyote.
There are curved lines that show the flow of the sky. The buildings and the bricks have sharp lines
with edges. There are vertical lines on the wooden buildings that show the direction that the wood is
going.

Shape: ​The shapes of the human faces show their sadness. The buildings and windows are rectangles.
The moon is a circle, which shows that it is full.

Texture: ​There is some texture shown by the lines that make up the fur of the coyote. This gives the
feel of pricklyness to the coyote. The bricks have dots on them which give them a rough feel. The
wood of the buildings feels flat.

Color: ​ Almost everything is colored as it would appear in real life. The coyote is a brownish-grey
color. The moon is the brightest object on the two pages. The humans at the top of the page are not
colored as they would be in real life. This is because they are ghosts and are colored grey as well as
the same color that is used for the sky.

Page design and word placement, use of white/dark space, text placement and font:
Explain how illustrations relate to poem content:
Page 28 is the left-sided page and page 29 is the right-sided page. Page 28 has writing on it. The
writing is in the middle of the page and is in a box. The ghosts are on top of the box and the town is
below the box. The ghosts are looking down at the town. There are also piles of bricks in the town
which shows what the town has become. Page 29 has a picture of a coyote howling at the full moon.
The coyote is large and takes up a majority of the page. The pictures relate directly to the poem
content. The text on page 28 mentions that the “voices from years long ago whisper soft and low”
and the coyotes “laugh at human times gone by.” The humans are looking down at the town
whispering about what had happened long ago. The coyote is on a page by itself howling at the moon,
which is it’s form of laughter.
6. CHILD DEVELOPMENT THEORIES​​ -
● Select a poem from the book.
● Choose a theory (Piaget-cognitive, Erikson-psychosocial or emotional
development); identify the stage, age.
● Give specific examples from the poem to show the connection to the
developmental stage and age
Poem: “Investors, far away, backed out. Their actions based on fear and doubt; And, one by one,
the mines shut down. A costly blow that stunned the town. The news was carried by the wind; the
ever clever coyotes grinned. The streetlights, dimmed in nineteen ten. To never come back on
again: the city water ceased to flow.
Theory: Emotional Development
Stage______5_________________ Age_________7to 11_______
Examples: A child is developing in their ability to feel empathy. Also children are able to understand
that fear can lead us to walk away from many things we once liked or loved to do.
 7. Overall Rating of poetry book- the book’s appeal to children (3 high - 1 3
low)
Explain the rating:
I loved the way this book tells the story the whole story of “Rhyolite”. The rhythm and rhyme is
found in every page. It flows and is very fun to read.