Although Walt Whitman did not write poetry for chlidren, Barbara Kerley's book, Walt Whitman, Words for America, brings one of America's most celebrated poets to life for kids of all ages. The breathtaking illustrations by Brian Selznick, make this one of the most beautiful picture books I have ever seen.
The first sentence of the book, written in gigantic font says, "WALT WHITMAN LOVED WORDS." Kerley follows Whitman's passion for words from his apprenticeship at a printers at age 12, through his days writing and printing his own newspaper, rambling through the country, and all the way through his involvement with the Civil War, helping care for wounded soldiers. She describes Whitman's devastation over Lincoln's Assassination - which inspired one of his most well known poems, "Oh Captain! My Captain!"
Kerley uses Whitman's poetry not only to show what Whitman was feeling and experiencing at different stages of his life, but also, the triumphs, pains, and emotions of an entire country. Whitman truly was a voice for America:
I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise...
Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man,
Stuff'd with the stuff that is coarse and stuff'd with the stuff that is fine,...
One of the Nation of many nations, the smallest of the small and the largest the same,
A southerner soon as a Northerner...
...a Hoosier, Badger, Buckeye...
At home on the hills of Vermont or in the woods of Maine, or the Texan ranch...
Of every hue and caste am I, of every rank and religion...
I resist any thing better than my own diversity...
"Song of Myself" from Leaves of Grass
April is National Poetry Month
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