Dan Walker is a longtime teacher and occasional Park Ranger,

    with long experience trying to maintain the interest of a wide

    audience— What if this or that happened?--and who has often

    had to draw on actual chalkboards!
 
    The poems' themes are universal-love, death, spirituality, pets,

    farms, animals, teaching, aging....

    Many have won prizes and been previously published, but this is the

    author's first collection.

    They're often funny, but usually have something serious under the    

    surface.  Quite a few give tongue-in-cheek advice, like how to keep

    the deer from eating your tulips or how NOT to train your human.

    Wording and imagery are widely accessible and would make good

    models for students (or adults) to imitate-or argue with. Some use

     traditional patterns, like the sonnet or villanelle, which the author

    handles with the skill of long practice, but others are monologues

    in more open forms, with a variety of voices, and often parody well

    known figures of literature, like Mark Twain or one of Ahab's

    officers in Moby Dick.

    So, yes, it's not hard to imagine the author using these to

    interest students.

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