BORROWED NAMES
by Jeannine Atkins
Henry Holt, 2010
Category: NF/Poetry for Young Adults
I spent the long weekend wrapped in children’s literature at the American Library Association’s Midwinter Conference in Boston, MA. Catching up with publishing friends, meeting librarians, browsing books, and retreating from the outside world (and its tragedy, politics, winter storms and spring To Do lists) was a welcome, if selfish, joy. I came home rejuvenated. I also came home with an amazing book to tell you about …
At the conference, I picked up an Advanced Reading Copy (ARC) of Jeannine Atkins BORROWED NAMES, a biography (of sorts) for young adults. Jeannine is a friend, and one whose sensibility I admire; I knew her book would be something I’d enjoy. I did not know it would move me the way it did.
BORROWED NAMES is a collective biography, told in verse, of three women: Laura Ingalls Wilder, Madam C.J. Walker, and Marie Curie. Three extraordinary lives that at first glance seem unrelated are pulled close in Jeannine’s poems, which explore their times (all three women were born in 1867), their passions (work and family) and their relationships with their daughters (Rose Wilder Lane, A’Lelia Walker, and Irène Joliet-Curie). I was struck by the originality of this idea and I was completely captivated by the poems. Exploring the delicate complexity of the mother-daughter relationship through poetry was an inspired choice. Well done, Jeannine!
I earmarked pages and underlined words throughout my copy of BORROWED NAMES, and I intend to read it again, more slowly and with time for truly relishing the verse. When I do, I know that I will be caught all over again by the poem called Handful of Dirt, in which Irène Joliet-Curie grieves for Marie and asks “Who is a daughter without her mother?”
Yes, I cried. Wouldn’t you?
BORROWED NAMES will be available in March 2010, and I hope some of you will look for it then. (Heck, I’d pre-order it now if I were you!) Share it with your mother or your daughter or your sister or your best friend. I hope it moves you (and them) as much as it did me.