WALT WHITMAN, Words For America
By Barbara Kerley
Illustrated by Brian Selznick
Scholastic Press, 2004
Category: Picture book biography
Happy Nonfiction Monday!
In a perfect world I would have prepared this inaugural Nonfiction Monday post last week, polished it over the weekend, and posted it before the sun was up this morning. But my world is decidedly imperfect: last week was mayhem, the weekend was chaos, and I am still not entirely certain where this morning has gone.
In times like these I find the best thing is to stop and breathe … and read a book. Today I picked up WALT WHITMAN. Picture book biographies are one of my favorite genres, and I have been meaning to read this once since Elizabeth Partridge recommended it. It feels right, too, that my first Nonfiction Monday post have a poetry connection. (Read why here.)
I often feel, when reading poetry, that I have been given a dozen pages from the middle of a breathtaking novel– the climax of the book, perhaps–but nothing more. The import of the pages is obvious; there is something exhilarating and nearly-meaningful in the words, but without the opening chapters to lay the groundwork and the final pages to lay out the resolution, I can’t quite understand what the author was trying to say. I end up feeling frustrated … and more than a little dense.
Today Barbara Kerley, Brian Selznick, and WALT WHITMAN changed all that. Today, after snuggling up with a picture book, I realized something important about poetry: context helps. And now I can read O Captain! My Captain! (printed, along with other poems cited in the text, in the backmatter of WALT WHITMAN) and understand, at long last, the mixture of joy and sorrow. Kerley and Selznick let me glimpse the heart and times of Walt Whitman, and this glimpse, in turn, gave me access to his poem.
Not bad for a children’s book, eh?
Hooray for Mondays, Nonfiction, and books that teach and center at the same time.
For a summary of today’s Nonfiction Monday posts, visit Anastasia Suen’s Roundup.