May 7, 2014: Remember the anticipation in elementary school of an upcoming Lecture Series assembly? Artist and poet Douglas Florian did not disappoint students during his recent visit to the Bronxville Elementary School.
Sponsored by the Lecture Series and The Bronxville School Foundation's Erna Christensen Fund, the author gave four presentations to the students organized by grade.
Douglas Florian was born and raised in New York City and educated at Queens College and the School of Visual Arts. Florian was a cartoonist for the New Yorker before a chance encounter with William Cole's anthology of children's verse, Oh, That's Ridiculous (1977), inspired him to try his hand at the art.
Florian frequently uses the natural world as his subject, with wordplay, neologisms, rhyme, and humor to engage young readers. His books include Insectlopedia, Beast Feast, UnBEElievables, and Dinothesaurus.
Students learned about rhythm, alliteration, rhyme, and onomatopoeia as he read his poems out loud and had the students repeat his poems after him. His high-energy interactions with the students were all in rhyme as he held up large illustrations from his poems. Part of his presentation required students to guess what animals were illustrated in several of his drawings.
Dr. Erna Christensen was a master teacher at Bronxville from 1955 to 1978. The fund was established in her honor to support language arts at the elementary school.
The Lecture Series, which has been in existence since the 1920s, is a cultural arts program that brings a variety of authors, artists, musicians, dancers, and naturalists to Bronxville Elementary School.
The Lecture Series program is funded by parent donations. A fund drive to raise money for the programs occurs at the school every fall.
To see photos, click here: Douglas Florian at Bronxville Elementary School.
Pictured here: Poet Douglas Florian teaching forms of poetry to Bronxville Elementary School students.
Photos by Dianne Aronson and Peggy Williams