Ekua Holmes

The Crossover
"poetry in motion"
written by Kwame Alexander
illustrated by Ekua Holmes

As Ms. McGill read a poem about basketball,
students were inspired.
When Ms. McGill said we would write a poem about our favorite sport and illustrate it,
the excitement grew.
We wrote poems about our favorite movement using Kwame's techniques.
We looked at Ekua's collage artwork and noticed she used
newspapers
and wallpaper books.
We noticed the people were usually in silhouette.

Could we make a silhouette of the action and what words would we use?
pow, poof, splash, smack, whoosh, slap, cheep, scrunch, ding, phwoom, shriek, ay, hey, keeyah, thud, strick, clash, ping, thwack, swoosh, swish


Ms. Mary Lou asked one person to get up on the table and make the movements
of basketball and then freeze.
We all had a turn on the table to freeze into our favorite activity.
It was so much fun! and we love our silhouettes!

Thank you Festival of the Book for making it possible for us to see Kwame and Ekua in person
and listen to them talk about their process.

Here are some of the finished poems and artwork.....