I Say ODE, You Say ... Grecian Urn?

This post title actually reveals my own reaction to poems in the form of ODES. One official definition of an ODE is this:

a lyric poem in the form of an address to a particular subject, often elevated in style or manner and written in varied or irregular meter.

Many of us who were traditionally educated in earlier decades learned Keats's ODE TO A GRECIAN URN, a poem whose language I admired but one that did nothing to inspire me or make me run right out to gush over an urn. Now, later in life, I have come to admire the excellence of the poetic structure and patterns, the lyrical flow and underlying emotional passion expressed. Even so, mention of an ODE, to me, elicits expectations of stilted language, overwrought or exaggerated emotions, and tightly structured forms.

Chronicle Books, 2023, Poetry

ODE TO A BAD DAY, written by Chelsea Lin Wallace and illustrated by Hyewon Yum takes those reactions to the ODE form (which I suspect are more common than not) and plays with them in delightful ways. Using familiar daily disappointments, a la ALEXANDER and the TERRIBLE, HORRIBLE, NO GOOD, VERY BAD DAY, Wallace identifies moments in a day that knock this young girl narrator back a peg, although leaving us to slog alongside with her  to the next mundane disappointment. 

End papers reveal a charmingly aware and self-directed young girl who recognizes happiness around her but also spies miseries, even slight ones. Her body-angst while still in her morning bed (sprawling, upside down, visibly uncomfortable) call to mind a child I know who requires many square yards of mattress to make it through a night. Sometimes, her day dawns as sunny as the outdoors, and others are launched with groans. 

In this case, the first ode decries crusty eyes, rusty bones, and dusty teeth. This ode, as with all others, has an opening line to address the offending aspect of the day, and concludes with a similar line of direct address. 

The next ode is excerpted on the publishers page:

Oh Too Much Milk in My Cereal!

Soggy, squishy! Boggy, mushy!

You turned my crispy into gushy!

Slogging through the remains of the day, odes address OUCHY, LINE CUTTER, HICCUP, BOREDOM, and... just imagine more. The cover illustration aptly reveals a lass whose responses to the world and her own moods are fully felt and expressed, perhaps edging toward being a drama queen. What shines through is that she periodically calls out for tomorrow being a better day, displaying awareness of the transient nature of such misery and longing for a return to a rosy state of mind. 

Yum's illustrations are  delightfully effective, utilizing broad strokes of colors and exaggerated facial expressions and postures that reveal the narrator's moods in contrast to the reality of the quite sunny world through which she is moving. This defies the girl's descriptions of her gloomy day and ramps up the humor found in the descriptive word choices and targets of her anguish. Those illustrations also incorporate subtle details that will invite multiple readings and enhance the entertainment  factor, particularly the eye rolls and reactions of stuffed animals, even the cow on the milk carton. 

This title offers a delightful mentor writing resource for workshop use, allowing practice with the form, exploration of emotions, formal rhyme patterns, humor (without relying on puns and joke telling), and story arc/character development. Figurative language that is often used by kids in everyday conversation but is seldom addressed as a writing skill is HYPERBOLE. This picture book uses it to great effect, balancing successfully on the line between sincere and silly.This dramatic young narrator has actually inspired me to try writing some odes of this type, perhaps as self-help therapy on a bad day! Be sure to compare this to the fifty-plus year old, never-out-of-print classic ALEXANDER for a sure source of inspiration in kids who sometimes struggle to find things to write. EVERYONE has a bad day now and then, so why not write about it?

Here's an opinion from one of my most trusted review sources: 

“The poetic structure and regal cadence lend the child’s voice a sense of polite formality, bringing ironic humor to her bad day…cleverly matched with bits of visual humor” — Bulletin for the Center of Children’s Books