Module 4 (Biographical Poetry)- Lives: Poems about Famous Americans

(Credit)

Hopkins, Lee Bennet, Lives: Poems about Famous Americans. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1999.

ISBN: 0-06-027767-X

This collection of poetry describes the lives of fourteen people who are famous to American history. Through this collection we learn about people like Eleanor Roosevelt, Langston Huges, and Harriett Tubman. These people left such a major impact of American culture. Hopkins, along with a few others did a great job of highlighting these accomplishments. Each poem is roughly about 5-8 stanza’s long and gives a short recap of an important accomplishment. It is a very readable collection of poetry for young adults. I really like that there is a table of contents and a type of glossary! Students can really use these type of text features in order to better understand these poems content.

The illustrations are by Leslie Staub.  Every illustration sits opposite it’s poem. The illustrations are portraits of the subject of each poem. Staub does an amazing job using narrow lines and a lot of bright color that really cause the pictures to come off the page and seem as though the constituents had never aged!

Overall I felt that this book of poetry would be an asset to any collection. First, biographical pieces that are worth their salt can be difficult to find, let alone biographical poetry. Bennet is well known for wonderful poetry for young adults and I am always impressed with his work. This piece is no different. My expectations were met and I would highly recommend it.

As I mentioned previously, valid biographical resources for children are very difficult to find, let alone poetry. This resource would be great help in a research project. Using this book and pebble-go, I think students could really learn a lot about people that were important to America’s grown and current standing.

Poem:

ABE

Alice Sehertle

And so,

young Abe

            of the too-short pants

            and too-long legs,

young Abe spitting into his palms,

wrapping his bony fingers aroung

            the handle of an axe,

sinking the bright blade deep

            into heartwood,

young Abe splitting the rails apart

grew into Abe

            of the sad eyes,

            of the face carved deep

            by sorrow,

wrapping his stong hands

            around a nation,

trying to hold the bleeding halves

together

until they healed.