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**"Sidman’s ear is keen, capturing many voices. Her skill as a poet accessible to young people is unmatched."

(School Library Journal, starred review)

This Is Just To Say:

Poems of Apology and Forgiveness

illustrated by Pamela Zagarenski

Houghton Mifflin, 2007

ISBN-13: 978-0-618-61680-0

Listen to Joyce read from this book.

Reader's Guide (click here)

Awards

Claudia Lewis Poetry Award

Cybils Poetry Award

Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award Honor Book

Texas Bluebonnet Award Nomination

New York Public Library's "100 Titles for Reading

and Sharing"

School Library Journal Best Book of the Year

Book Links Lasting Connection Book

Reviews

**School Library Journal (starred review)

"Sidman’s ear is keen, capturing many voices. Her skill as a poet accessible to young people is unmatched . . . This is an important book both for its creativity and for its wisdom."

**Book Page

"The concept for Sidman's book is original and entertaining, using a fictional classroom to bring a group of poems and their elementary school authors to life . . . a fabulous book to show students the many forms that poetry can take and to inspire them to write their own 'sorry' poems."

**Kirkus

" . . . this series of poems was inspired by William Carlos Williams's famous poem of the same title regarding a theft of plums. . . . Packed with the intensity of everyday pain and sorrow, kids and adults exchange the words that convey grief, delight, love and acceptance of themselves and others."

**Publisher's Weekly

"This often humorous and touching anthology . . . successfully navigate[s] the complicated terrain for those who seek forgiveness."

How this book started . . .

My "day job" is teaching one-week writing residencies in local schools. I love this work, which makes me laugh and wonder and share the deep emotional life of children. I often teach the "sorry" poem lesson using W.C. Williams' poem "This Is Just to Say" as a model. One year, I asked a group of 4th graders to help me write a sorry poem to my mother, apologizing for breaking a glass deer (yes, it was me). One of the children looked me in the eye. "Well," he said, "are you going to send it to her?" So I did, and she wrote me back a lovely letter about how she'd felt all those years ago. That was the beginning. It made me think a lot about apology and forgiveness. What if all those sorry poems were actually sent to the people they were written to? And what if those people wrote back? One day I sat down to write, and a group of students stepped forth from my imagination to utter their apologies, one by one.

Dodge Ball Crazy

(to Reuben) by Kyle

Sorry,

Reubs,

for belting you

as hard

as I could

in dodge ball

I'd like

to say

I wouldn't

do it again

but I'd

be lying

From THIS IS JUST TO SAY

What would you write if you could apologize for anything you've ever done wrong? The students in Mrs. Merz's 6th grade class decide to find out. Then they take the bold move of asking for responses to their apology poems. Join them as they speak of dodgeball accidents, stolen doughnuts, broken windows, crushes, and lost pets--and find that the responses are not always what they expected.

Advice from Anthony and others in Mrs. Merz's class on how to write sorry poems.