Heroes and She-roes - J Patrick Lewis

Poetry
Poems of Amazing and Everyday Heroes
Illustrated by Jim Cooke
Dial Books for Young Readers, 2005
40 pages
for: elementary school kids (and all the rest of us, too)
Rating: 5
Endpapers: Avocado

Poems of heroes in general. Poems about specific heroes. Heroes that I didn't know about. Heroes I never really thought about. There are so many heroes in our lives to consider. This is book to help kids - and us all - remember that!

Each of the 21 poems has information about the person or event that is the subject of the poem, which makes the book even more interesting. The illustrations are portraits: witty, colorful. I can picture an overhead for each page or double page to greet the kids in the morning as they enter the classroom, for reflection, journaling, even handwriting, and of course, for plain old enjoyment!

Heroes and She-roes

Give thanks to the he- and she-roes
Who will turn upon a dime
When occasion calls for action ---
And be there in half the time.

Roll red carpets out for she-roes
And to heroes raise a toast
For extraordinary courage ---
Yet you’ll never hear them boast.

Lend your hand to he- and she-roes,
To the valiant and the brave,
To those simple people know by
Two simple words: The gave.

The Elementary School Teacher

A teacher is a person
Unafraid
To get the third degree
From Second Grade!

Teachers are pathfinders, guides, truth-seekers, champions, role models, and guardians. Some of the greatest heroes and she-roes can be found in classrooms.


(I had to include this. It makes me feel really good...and reminds me of the many teachers and mentors that have helped create the teacher that I am today.)

The Organizer

Cesar Chavez
Migrant Labor Organizer, 1927-1993

Cesar was a peaceable fighter
With his back against the wall.
He was the David to Goliaths,
One worker against them all.

Up from the Mexican culture,
He rallied migrants to unite
And challenged consumers to boycott
Five years for the grape pickers’ plight.

Cesar won and lost many battles
But never resorted to arms,
And the carried the torch for La Causa
Across California farms.

Poor migrants, whose harvest was hunger,
Depended on him to be strong,
To ignite the fight and fight for right
And everywhere right the wrong.


Here are the other subjects included:

The Seeker (Helen Keller)
The Explorers (Meriwether Lewis & William Clark)
The Unknown Rebel (Tiananmen Square, Beijing, China, June 5, 1989)
The Wonder Dog (Togo, Alaska, 1925)
The Little Angel of Colombia (Alabeiro Vargas, Columbia South America) REALLY INTERESTING!
The Peacemaker (Mohandas Gandhi)
The Nun (Sister Jeannette Normandin)
The Great One (Roberto Clemente) Includes some unknown-to-me information
The Bareback Rider (Lady Godiva) No kidding - talk about fascinating...
The Preachers (MLK, Jr. & Mahalia Jackson)
The Riveter ("Rosie the Riveter)
The Journalist (Ida Wells-Barnett)
The Soldier (Joan of Arc)
The Steadfast (Rosa Parks)
The Immigrants
The Child Laborer (Iqbal Masih) Whoa! This'll make me dig deeper...


Wonderful. Should be in every 3-6th grade classroom!

Americans Who Tell the Truth - Robert Shetterly

Puffin, 2005
Paper $7.99
for: middle grades

To open a book and be greeted by Samantha Smith -- well! And then a few pages along comes Howard Zinn! Be still my heart! Throw in 48 other very special Americans....many of whom we don't see written up for kids....and we have this fascinating book.

The portraits of each person are etched with one of their own quotes. (I DO with the quotes were a little easier to read.) At the back of the book there's a short biographical blurb about each of them. But the fifty pages depicting the "celebrites" are hand drawn, hand etched, and beautiful.

(I met Robert Shetterly years ago at the Northeast Harbor Library AND at Oz Children's Bookstore in Southwest Harbor.... both on Mt. Desert Island, Maine. He's from Brooksville, ME, and he and his wife, also a writer, are lovely people.)

He says that after Sept. 11 he was "inspired to draw strength from this community of truth tellers." Cool way to put it.

Add more to the list. Create your own anthology with a different theme. Art, quotes, and information....just like Amelia to Zora.

The fifty:
Jane Addams
Muhammed Ali
Susan B. Anthony
James Baldwin
Wendell Barry
Rachel Carson
Cesar Chavez
Chief Joseph
Noam Chomsky
William Sloane Coffin
Dorothy Day
Frederick Douglass
W. E. B. DuBois
Marian Wright Edelman
Dwight Eisenhower
Emma Goldman
Amy Goodman
Woody Guthrie
Doris Haddock
Jim Hightower
Zora Neale Hurston
Molly Ivins !!
Mary "Mother" Jones
Helen Keller
Kathy Kelly
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Jonathan Kozol
Dorothea Lange
Lewis Lapham
Frances Moore Lappe
Perry Mann
John Muir
Ralph Nader
Rosa Parks
Paul Robeson
Eleanor Roosevelt
Frank Serpico !
Margaret Chase Smith
Samantha Smith
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Louis "Studs" Terkel
Henry David Thoreau
Sojourner Truth
Mark Twain
Ida B. Wells
Walt Whitman
Judy Wicks
Jody Williams
Terry Tempest Williams
Howard Zinn

Hard to top THEM!

Our Abe Lincoln - Jim Aylesworth

An Old Tune with New Lyrics
Illustrator: Barbara McClintock
for: Young kids
Rating: 5
2009
$16.99

A class is putting on a play about Abe Lincoln, accompanied by simple words to the thune of "The Old Grey Mare." I sang the words as I read from page to page. The following is from the middle of the book:

Friend Abe Lincoln go sent of to Washington
........Sent of to Washington
........Sent off to Washington
Friend Abe Lincoln got sent too to Washington
........Many campaigns ago.
Kind Abe Lincoln then led as the president
........Led as the president
........Led as the president
Kind Abe Lincoln then led as the president
........Many cruel days ago.

Simple. You get the picture. It tells the story of Abraham Lincoln simply, first facts for younger kids to have and hold and take with them through life.

There's no white - pale yellow instead - one full page is a framed illustration, the facing page has the stage curtains on top and side with additional drawring across the bottom, beneath the lyrics.

Very, very nice.

Ron's Big Mission - Rose Blue & Corinne J. Naden

Illustrator: Don Tate
2009
Rating: 4
Endpapers: Azure
$16.99

This is the fictionalized account of something that happened to Ron McNair in 1959 in his hometown in South Carolina. However, since it's based on a true story, I'm going to consider it biography. Destined to be one of the Challenger astronauts (that blew up with Christa McAuliffe), Ron loved to read and spent hours and hours in the library reading. Everyone there knew him, but he never took home any books to read. He sat there all those hours reading - because he wasn't allowed to borrow books from the library because of the color of his skin.

One day he decided he'd had enough. He was going to borrow books. He was stubborn. He was polite. The police (who knew and liked him) were called. And the head librarian decided that she would do what was only right - she went into the back room and created a library card for him.

I never even thought about this aspect of racism. It blows me away. I hope we've come a long way since then......

A River of Words - Jen Bryant

The Story of William Carlos Williams
Illustrator: Melissa Sweet
For: kids & poetry lovers
Rating: 5
2008
endpapers:light lime green with other greens in blocks, 5 poems on front, 4 poems on back

From the time he was a young boy, William Carlos Williams loved to be outdoors, taking things slowly, looking at the world. He loved the gentle sounds and natural rhythm of nature...and this same feeling carried over to the times when his teacher read poetry aloud. At a young age he began writing poetry. He filled journals, he wrote all the time. But he knew that writing poetry would not support a family, so he went into medicine, becoming a doctor. A good one. For forty years. But his good friends - writers (Ezra Pound, Hilda Doolittle), and artists (Charles Demuth) kept his creative juices flowing. He kept writing. And writing.

This books includes timelines (1883-1963), all sorts of interesting added information from the author and the illustrator, a list of books for further reading, and a short selection (9) of poems.

The illustrations are interesting and different, usng an altered book technique that delights my own creative juices. The way this book is illustrated really gives you a chance to think beyond the words. I think it's very effective. I love it.

The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens

The Great Figure

Among the rain
and lights
I saw the figure 5
in gold
on a red
firetruck
moving
tense
unheeded
to gong clangs
siren howls
and wheels rumbling
through the dark city.

Gertrude is Gertrude is Gertrude is Gertrude - Jonah Winter

Illustrator: Calef Brown
Published: 2009
For: Kids
Rating: Still mulling
Endpapers: Deep purple
$16.99

Okay, I've heard of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas and their marijuana brownies and interesting soirees with artists and writers, but I had no clue what kind of writer Gertrude was. This book let me know. At first, as I read, I wondered what in heck was going on, but it slowly dawned on me that this must be modeled by Stein's writing. For example:

"Gertrude is Gertrude is Gertrude is Gertrude. And Alice is Alice. And Gertrude and Alice are Gertrude and Alice. Well it's like this. You walk up the stairs, and there they are. They are sitting in chairs and there they are, staring where they are staring. Not the chairs. Chairs never stare. Chairs are where you sit and stare....."

In the author's note at the end, Winter states: "Her very famous writing was famous for being repetitive, playful, childlike, conversational, and often quite nonsensical. And her very famous writing has bee imitated by many other writers, including the author of this book, whose title is an imitation of her most quoted line: 'Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose......Often mocked in her lifetime, Stein is now praised for being among the most original and influential voices of the twentieth century."

Mentioned particularly are Picasso, Matisse, and Hemingway. But how much will kids get this? I bet there aren't a lot of ADULTS who would recognize her style of writing. Her name, perhaps, and the title of one of her books, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. But has anyone of this generation read it? I'm going to look it up and see if it's readily available, or at the library.....

I recognize Caleb Brown's work. His illustrations fit perfectly with the text and funky writing, full color from edge-of-page to edge-of-page. A fun book.

Ed Spicer writes a "rave" review on his blog, Reading Roadtrips. Check it out!

Abraham Lincoln Comes Home - Robert Burleigh

Illustrator: Wendell Minor
For: Kids, but they need to be old enough to know who Lincoln was
Published: August, 2008
Rating: 4.5
Read: today
Endpapers: Enlarged corner of the American flag with the words: "WE MOURN/ OUR CHIEF/ HAS FALLEN

Edge-of-page to edge-of-page gentle, meaningful illustrations accompany a similarly gentle story that eloquently says a lot with very few words.

A young boy and his father ride their horse and buggy, its single lantern bobbing, through the darkness of the prairie to the place where the railroad passes through. Bonfires burn along the rails as the people wait for the train carrying Lincoln's body to pass. Slowly it appears, with a picture of Lincoln atop the cowcatcher. Slowly it passes, so that the country can pay its last respects to an honored and much-loved man. For 1600 miles, by hearse and by train, Lincoln's body was carried from Washington D.C. back to Springfield, Illinois. It is said that about thirty million people were able to see the train, march in a procession behind the hearse, or attend one of about a dozen funeral services.

The media has certainly changed things. This story, these illustrations, hold a reverance, a simplicity, that seems absent today. It's a beautiful book, celebrating an exceptional life, adding an additional chapter to a story many of us know well. Bravo.

What To Do About Alice? - Barbara Kerley

Illustrator: Edwin Fotheringham
For: Early/Middle Grades
Pub: 2008
Rating: 3.5/5
Read: Aug. 26, 2008

Subtitle: How ALICE ROOSEVELT broke THE RULES, charmed THE WORLD, and drove her FATHER TEDDY CRAZY!

In this picture book biography of Alice Roosevelt, we learn about her upbringing, her energy, her mischieviousness, and her spirit. She sounds like a character that was hard to control, much to the dismay of her father, Teddy, the 26th president of the United States. Both the style in which it is written ( lots of capital letters, italics, and bold print) and illustrations (at least nine of them use dotted lines to show frenetic movement and energy) show something about her do-anything personality. ADHD, maybe?

This is a picture book, and although the illustrations work really well and add tremendously to the story, I'm just not crazy about Fotheringham's style. I DO like that he uses the entire page, leaving virtually no negative space, and the illustration of Alice "losing" herself in the library is quite cool.

Quotation marks are used throughout the text, so I'd say that Kerley researched well and chose many of Teddy and Alice's own words, or quoted from someone else's writing about them. This would be a good model for students.

Sometimes it's stupid little things that bother me....the front end pages contain the title page and the back end pages add interesting Author's Notes, BUT the library has (of course) firmly taped down the flaps so that I can not read everything without damaging something. I decided not to. How disappointing not to find out about "The Other Washington Monument", which I think tells about the years after Alice's husband's death.