Squirrel Poetry: Flora & Ulysses, The Illuminated Adventures by Kate DiCamillo

Hello, and happy Poetry Friday! Be sure to visit Karen Edmisten for Roundup!

I'm taking a break today from my Karla Kuskin series to talk about the poetry in FLORA & ULYSSES: The Illuminated Adventures.

I'm a huge Kate DiCamillo fan, so I was very excited when I first heard about FLORA & ULYSSES. Yet I wasn't able to get to it for months. And then it won the Newbery! So of course I HAD to make time for it. :)

It's a zany adventure, in part, about a superhero squirrel and a self-proclaimed cynic. The best part? Ulysses (the squirrel) writes poetry!

"I love your round head,
the brilliant green,
the watching blue,
these letters,
this world, you.
I am very, very hungry."

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"In any case, he wasn't thinking about dying. He was thinking about poetry. That is what Tootie said he had written: Poetry. He liked the word - -its smallness, its density, the way it rose up at the end as if it had wings.
Poetry."

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And in one of the comic strip segments wonderful created by K.G. Campbell, one of the cells says this:

AND THE SUPERHERO WAS
ENORMOUSLY, INORDINATELY
PLEASED WITH HIMSELF.

HE FELT IMMENSELY POWERFUL!

HE FELT LIKE WRITING A POEM!

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Finally, in the Epilogue:

Words for Flora

Nothing
would be
easier without
you,
because you
are
everything,
all of it --
sprinkles, quarks, giant
donuts, eggs sunny-side up-
you
are the ever-expanding
universe
to me.