Tenth Day of Thanks-Giving: Roundup of Thankus and Thank-You Notes

Today is the last day of our Ten Days of Thanks-Giving. The event was inspired by Esther's post about a poetry form called the THANKU, a thank-you note in haiku form. We TeachingAuthors decided to sponsor the Ten Days of Thanks-Giving as an opportunity for our readers, students, and everyone in the Kidlitosphere to share their own thank-yous.  We hope to make this an annual event taking place every November 20-30.

Today, I'll share some of the thank you notes we received, and a roundup of links to sites where fellow bloggers posted their thank-yous. But first, I want to share my own THANKU.

On Monday, Mary Ann wrote about being thankful for the Hive, a group of Vermont College alumni that we're both blessed to be part of. My thank you today is an appropriate follow-up to that post because it's to the woman responsible for my attending Vermont College: my teacher, mentor, and friend, Sharon Darrow. I've known Sharon for so long now that I can't even recall how we first met. However, I do remember the fateful day when we had lunch together and I mentioned my desire to take some advanced writing classes. Sharon encouraged me to apply to the Vermont College MFA program in Writing for Children and Young Adults instead. The idea terrified me. Who was I to try to get an MFA in writing? My undergraduate degree was in Math and Computer Science! But Sharon had such faith in me that I decided to take the plunge and apply. Little did I know then all the wonderful things my acceptance to VC would lead to.

I don't think I can top the marvelous tribute Esther wrote last week in honor of her mentor and teacher, Barbara Lucas. So instead, I dedicate this simply Thanku Haiku to Sharon Darrow:

Your encouragement

yielded a harvest beyond

my expectations.

Thank you, Sharon. And thank you to all the wonderful writing teachers I worked with at Vermont College as a result of following Sharon's advice.

Now, to share some of the thank you notes and comments we received during our Ten Days of Thanks-Giving. As it happens, just this morning Bobby Miller, a terrific writer I met when we were both students at Vermont College, posted a Vermont College-related thank-you comment on Mary Ann's post of yesterday:

I share my big Thank You to the MFA/Writing for Children program. It changed my life, personally and professionally. It brought my life's goal into focus, gave it purpose. And I walked away with treasured friendships.

Yesterday, Linda at Teacherdance posted a beautiful 25-word thank-you note to her writing community as a comment on that same blog post:

Thank you my writing colleagues;
your words bless me, put my life
into a higher plane, entice me to
write more, think more, be more.

I had invited the students of a creative writing class I'm teaching for homeschoolers ages 10-14 to participate in our Ten Days of Thanks-Giving. Only one girl, Julia, was brave enough to share her 25-word thank-you note here:

Thanksgiving is a time to be thankful, so let's eat and drink and be merry. It is a time to be with family and friends.

Hooray for Julia! (See below for another student submission!)

And here are links to posts by other bloggers who participated in our celebration (roughly in the order of their posting):

• Tammy, a kindergarten teacher who blogs at the KlingerCafe posted a thank you note to her student teacher on November 20.
• Author/illustrator Michelle Kogan shared an original Thanku Haiku on her blog on November 21.
• On the same day, Lisa Ard posted a lovely Thanku Haiku to her grandmother on her Adventures in Writing blog.
• Also on November 21, Brenda Ferber posted a terrific trio of Thanku Haikus on her blog, Fresh Baked Bits.
• On November 21 and 22, Jules shared her own original Thanku Haikus on two blogs: Rhymesntime and  WritersVibe. Then one of Jules' fellow writers at the WritersVibe posted a comment in response to Jules that included a lovely Thanku Haiku to her co-bloggers:

Together we find
spirit greater than ourselves.
Our words, golden light. 

• Finally, on Thanksgiving day, Margo Dill posted her Thanku Haiku to her parents on her blog.

This just in (at 2:05 pm): a fun thank-you poem from Tyler, another of my homeschool students. (He submitted it via the comments, but I want all our subscribers to be able to see it too.)

I am thankful for:

family and friends,

cats, dogs,

fish, frogs,

people and places,

dungeons and maces,

Wait not thankful for that...

...it just rhymes.

Love the humor, Tyler! Thanks so much for participating!

And from author Leone Castell Anderson comes this lovely Thanku Haiku:

 "Thanks." A little word

but of infinite meaning.

For loving thoughts shared.

Marvelous, Leone!

Thanks again to everyone who took part in our Ten Days of Thanks-Giving. For those of you who'd still like to join in: it's not too late to send us your links and thank-you notes. I'll either add them to this roundup, or ask April to include them in her post on Friday.

Happy writing!
Carmela