Lives: Poems about Famous Americans

By Lee Bennett Hopkins

Book Overview

Poetry that makes us appreciate the magnitude of lives filled with courage, enthusiasm, inspiration. Lives: Poems About Famous Americans is the ideal introduction to sixteen American personalities who have changed the course of history. Favorite anthologist Lee Bennett Hopkins has brought together the work of a number of accomplished writers and poets, among them Jane Yolen, Nikki Grimes, and X. J. Kennedy, to portray such figures as Sacagawea, Babe Ruth, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Leslie Staubs portraits contain a poetry of their own, capturing a bit of history in the glint of smile or the reach of a hand. Lives is a book for all readers to savor. Notable Children's Trade Books in the Field of Social Studies 2000, National Council for SS & Child. Book Council

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 006027767X
• ISBN13: 9780060277673
• Release Date: April 1999
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Length: 40 Pages
• Weight: 0.82 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 8.2" x 10.3"
• Age Range: 4 to 8 years
• Grade Range: Grade 3

Customer Reviews

This is Poetry!

Lee Bennett Hopkins asked me several years ago to write a poem about Helen Keller. The result is included in this volume of poems for children. I insisted that Anne Sullivan be included in the poem because if you read Keller's autobiography you will see the way she sees Sullivan is part of herself. It affected me very much and the result is "Till". The rest of this unusual volume (see review by a teacher in Customer Reviews) is unusual in two ways. First, there is real poetry here. Lines with emotion arranged in a beautiful way by the poet. Second, poems aboutfamous Americans are rare in children's literature. Hopkins is the authority on children's poetry after the late Myra Cohn Livingston. Hopkins selected these poems, arranged them, and the result is a true book. Books these days tend to be thrown together and not very interesting. You'll love poems about Martin Luther King with the lines, "Now ten-ton bells together swing: Remember / Martin /Luther/ King. The simple beauty of the rhyme "swing" and "King" with its heaviness and that optimistic preacher's name. Lee Bennett Hopkins, who loves Hughes' poetry became a scholar on Hughes (See his book of Hughes' poetry "The Dream Keeper" and "Don't You Turn Back" if you can find it). He wrote "Dreamer"--it begins, "He let us kiss the the April rain." Later this wonderful rhyme: "He syncopated beats/ of Harlem blues. / O! /The might/ of / Langston Hughes." There are poems on Whitman, Eleanor Roosevelt, Sacagawea, Rosa Parks and more. Many of these Americans have never had a poem written of them. I looked at this book critically. After all, we are critics. It's worthwhile. As I see it, Lee Bennett Hopkins is an American treasure. The librarians of this nation are his greatest fans. What better recommendation for any author. America, let's value what we should value--you can begin at these "Lives Poems About Famous Americans."

One of a kind

Never have I seen a poetry book like this one. This is a teacher's dream. Use this in the classroom to 'spark' an interest in Helen Keller, Buzz Aldrin, Langston Hughes, or Eleanor Roosevelt. Feed the fascination for John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Langston Hughes or Babe Ruth. Powerful and poetic 'moments in time' of some of our greatest Americans. This book is for everyone.