Roger Williams In An Elevator

Youre banished! Its the twenty-first century. You cant banish me like Roger Williams was. Its our elevator. We can do what we want to! Fred reached into his pocket and took out a gun. When he pointed it upward toward Kate, she jumped away from the top of the shaking elevator and moved over to the ladder. As she gripped one of the rusty metal rungs, she felt a rush of wind behind her. The sounds of screaming voices and scraping metal fell downward with the elevator through the shaft. As the protagonist of Roger Williams in an Elevator, Kate Odyssey is a resident of Rhode Island and a descendant of Roger Williams. After she becomes trapped in a partially destroyed building, she helps people who are trapped inside of eight different elevators: yelling, accounting, liberty, watery, fiery, falling, sharing, and hidden. The different elevator communities create their own rules and freedoms. Events from these communities are connected to Roger Williamss seventeenth-century search for freedom. In her dreams and reality, Kate meets Roger Williams and his legacy. During her journey, she sees statues of Roger Williams and historic items in the Rhode Island State House. Photos of these attractions appear in Roger Williams in an Elevator.

One of the poems in PAW DREAM MAZES, “A Trasher Trashed,” has a kitten that was trashed and is dreaming a nightmare. This part of her dream is directly connected to her reality: The person who often did trash his cats had placed his face next to three thrashing rats, opened his mouth to scrunch his metal-like teeth, and scared the rats that were above and beneath. All the poems in PAW DREAM MAZES have dream/reality connections, animal content, rhymes, rhythms, alliteration, and metaphors. The dreamers include animals, people, and aliens from outer space. A few poems in this book reference COVID-19 experiences. PAW DREAM MAZES has sonnets, two prayer poems, narrative poems with a lot of action, ten pictures, and twenty-four mazes with content from five maze poems: “Mazes in Dreams,” “Dreams of Rescue,” “Cat Grammar,” “A Hungry Mouse in a Dream Maze,” and “Polydactyl Reality and Dreams.” Connections to our history are referenced in several poems: “Two Mayflower Dogs,” “A Banished Dog,” and “President Abraham Lincoln’s Pets.” Three poems have sci-fi content. “Tigurrrs of Space” has multiple alien tigurrrs that all love their own space and kidnap one of Earth’s tigers from a zoo. “Alien Bears in Pairs” has alien bears that interact with campers, police officers, a bear, and a dog. “Pawsing Time and Space” has aliens who visit the minds of dreaming animals and a senator on Earth.

The left shoe angrily kicked the right shoes heel; it wanted to step into its space ideal instead of being forced to move sideways and switch its preplanned straight path into a maze. In the narrative poem The Joys of Learning on Graduation Day, two shoes have stage rage. Like these shoes, we may occasionally want only a single straight path. Most times, though, the mazes of our lives completely amaze us. Especially on a holiday or a celebration, we love having the freedom to choose our way amid diverse pathways. Holidays Amaze has different kinds of poetry: maze poems, prayer poems, shaped poems, sonnets, and narratives. The varied poems are enhanced by Christian content, historic elements, dream/reality sections, and amazing interactions among family members, friends, and animals. In Holidays Amaze, success often happens, such as with resolutions on New Years Day, an unblocked writers block, a reduction of anxiety, and a decrease in impatience while waiting in line. Multimodal elements add to the amazing content of Holidays Amaze. Images are visible in the mazes, photos, metaphors, formats, shapes, and icons. Aural components can be heard in the rhythms, rhymes, alliteration, and other sound elements.

Paw Learning Mazes has maze poems, sonnets, and narrative poems with a lot of action and interaction between people and animals. Action also happens between animals and animals, as this stanza from the poem “Paws Learning in a Jungle” shows: “The mother was the first monkey to smell and to see the tiger that had been hiding in a different tree, but now was moving toward the mother’s only child that was too scared to run off into a jungle wild.” Different kinds of learning happen in Paw Learning Mazes, including writing, reading, financial literacy, STEM, visual, aural, historic, and multi-modal. People and animals can also learn within their dreams and from each other, as illustrated in “A Cat Learning How to Fly,” “Hissing for Free Space,” and “A Cat and a Dog Competing to Write Faster.” Team learning is seen in multiple poems, such as in “Team Learning for Ants.” Interaction between animals and people happens in “Learning with Birds in Roger Williams Park,” “A Dog Helping Her Owner to Read Fast,” “Pigeons Flying to Financial Literacy,” “Cats Grading Essays,” “A STEM Dream about an Egret,” and many other poems in this book. Paw Learning Mazes has thirty-four mazes, which are parts of eight maze poems. These mazes and eighteen pictures add to the multi-modal elements of this book’s poetry.

Now its my turn, Moe said. His index finger had the angry strength of steel even before he moved it onto the machine guns trigger. Heidis anxious hands became stronger as she clasped them together in prayer. When she opened her eyes, she stared briefly at the blood residue on Joes forearm. She then ran out of the store while yelling, You should catch me first. Im the one who gave those men their weapons. Heidi, a descendant of William Brewster and Gregory Dexter, is a new HIDE agent. When she becomes attached by a rope to a shooter, she sacrifices her own freedom in order to help others. During her journey, Heidi must sometimes run, hide, and fight. At other times, she stands her ground, becomes visible, and shares her faith and her love. Heidi occasionally remains quiet while sometimes speaking freely about her love for Kevin, her faith, and her ideas for dealing with shooters. Her hidden speech and free speech happen with words, body language, security glasses, and symbols. Unhidden Pilgrims connects free speech to religious freedom, dreams to reality, and the present to the past with action-filled scenes and pictures of historic items in Providence, Rhode Island, and Plymouth, Massachusetts.

“The person pulled paper cash from the briefcase while spitting more words into D.C. Cat’s face and pushing Cat’s shoulders and fighting paws into the case, which was scratched by Cat’s claws.” Like some of the other poems in AMAZING HOLIDAY PAWS, “Political Scratches from D.C.’s Dreaming Cat on National Cat Day” includes an animal’s point of view: “Atop other tables stood people and cats; their noses shifted round while sniffing for rats.” D.C. Cat—while homeless, dreaming, and wanting change—has a name; Cat interacts with people who have no names. Many animal views are visible in AMAZING HOLIDAY PAWS. The different viewpoints include ferrets on New Year’s Day, a groundhog’s view of climate change, a cat adopting a cat, a spy dog in Washington D.C.’s International Spy Museum, bees working on Labor Day, pets receiving gifts, and pets being gifts. In some of the poems, people do have viewpoints and names. Many interactions between animals and people also happen. For example, in the poem “Gifts of Pets on a Birthday,” a dog and a cat are presented as gifts to twin children. The parents show their children how to integrate the pets with each other and with their new environment. AMAZING HOLIDAY PAWS has rhythms, rhymes, alliteration, metaphors, animal pictures, and photos taken in Washington, D.C. This book has maze poems, prayer poems, sonnets, narratives, and content about holidays, animals, and United States history. “Rainbows on Veterans Day” refers to Sergeant Stubby, and “An American Dream on Washington’s Birthday” references George Washington’s animals.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1874.