Penny Parker Klostermann

Thanks to Leigh Anne at A Day in the Life for hosting the Poetry Friday Roundup today. If you’d like to know more about Poetry Friday, click HERE for an explanation by Renee LaTulippe.

Hello Friends! Just In case you haven’t visited before, let me tell you a little about A Great Nephew and A Great Aunt. My great nephew, Landon (now an eighth-grader) and I (his great aunt) collaborate. I write a poem which he illustrates. We started this collaboration in the fall of 2014 and had so much fun with it that we decided to invite others along. Landon and I will continue to have a new episode on one Friday of each month. The other Fridays are filling up quickly with guests sharing poetry and art in beautiful collaborations. I have created a page on my website to view all the episodes of A Great Nephew and a Great Aunt. Click HERE to visit the page and enjoy past episodes.

Today it’s my pleasure to share a creative collaboration from . . .

Sherri Jones Rivers, One Great Niece, and Three Great Nephews
Anna Claire (11 years old)
Twin brothers Andrew and Dylan (7 years old)
Price (8 years old)

From Sherri: I knew there were four of five great nieces and nephews I could ask. One great niece I asked was not happy with her drawing, and threw it away. So much for the temperamental artist! So, I moved on. The next great nephew I asked was on board. He told his mom he didn’t know what the cat in the poem looked like, but he thought gray was a good guess. He was on target—Sophie is a gray tabby. I knew I wanted to ask two artists, so I got in touch with one last mom. She said one of hers probably would want to, but it ended up that all three wanted to participate. It did my heart good, and all their drawings made me smile!

I just love it that Sherri set out to recruit an artist and ended up with four!!That just makes this post special times four. Also, Sherri took the same subject, her husband’s dog, and created a rhyming poem and a prose poem! How great is that?

FYI, Anna Claire, Dylan, and Andrew are siblings and Price is their cousin. Let’s get on with the fun!

Sherri’s 1st PoemPrice’s Art 

Dylan’s Art

Sherri’s 2nd Poem

Anna Claire’s Art 

 Andrew’s Art 

The Artists

Many thanks to Sherri, Anna Claire, Price, Dylan, and Andrew for sharing their talents with us today!

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Meet Sherri: Sherri’s poems, puzzles, and articles have appeared in many publications, including Ladybug, Pockets, Child Life, Jack and Jill, Flicker, and Highlights for Children. She has also written features and poems for adult magazines, both secular and religious, penned a newspaper bi-monthly column, had a humor essay in two anthologies, and spent several years writing and selling verse to greeting card companies. For a limerick contest at Saturday Evening Post, she was awarded first place and a whopping $100! She has won two Letters of Merit from SCBWI contests, which encourage her when the writing is not going well. She loves biographies of people overcoming obstacles, and has several biographies that fit that description in different stages of readiness. Although her children are adults now, some of her fondest memories are the days spent reading books to a child on her lap.

In addition to writing, Sherri loves to travel internationally, but back home the beach is her happy place. She and her husband reside in Augusta, GA with her two cats, Sophie and Sadie, and her husband’s dog Sandi—the subject of her two poems.