In Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My
Daughters, Barack Obama invites his daughters, and by extension all young
people, to see in themselves the qualities and ideals of thirteen trailblazing
Americans. Following a leading question beginning "Have I told
you...", a graceful paragraph accompanies each one of Loren Long’s
creative portraits, capturing the zeal and skill of each person. Georgia
O’Keefe “helped us see big beauty in what is small.” Albert Einstein “braid[s]
great ideas with imagination.” Helen Keller “taught us to look at and listen to
each other.” Maya Lin thought “public spaces should be filled with art.” Jackie
Robinson “showed us all how to turn fear to respect.” Sitting Bull's
"spirit soared free on the plains, and his wisdom touched the
generations." Our first president George Washington “helped make an idea
into a new country, strong and true, a country of principles, a country of
citizens.” Obama’s love for and belief in his daughters shine through on every
page, providing a wonderful way to share one’s own admiration for a student,
child, grandchild, niece or nephew – and to quietly identify the scope of our
American compatriots, the traits and ideals that unite us. This is a handsome
and moving picture book. Ages 6 up.
Related resources may be found at: TeachingBooks.net
On July 20, 1969, Buzz Aldrin
and Neil Armstrong became the first two humans to set foot on the Moon, journeying
into space aboard Apollo 11. In this engaging autobiography, Buzz Aldrin charts
his lifelong fascination with moving fast, venturing into the sky, and,
interestingly, collecting rocks! His movie hero the Lone Ranger inspired his
solo bicycle trip across the George Washington Bridge when he was ten. He continued
to seize every opportunity to do adventurous, if difficult, things: West Point,
the Air Force, sixty-six combat missions in the Korean War, back to school for
aeronautics and astronautics specializing in “rendezvous,” and finally becoming
an astronaut in America’s NASA space program. Reaching for the Moon conveys, through its first-person narrative, just
what it felt like to prepare for and then take that momentous trip to the Moon,
to step out of the Eagle onto its
surface, to look back at Earth. Artist Wendell Minor drew on documentary
materials from NASA in creating his wonderfully precise, absorbing
illustrations. Aldrin and Armstrong felt America’s pride behind them as they
placed a plaque to remain on the Moon: “Here men from the planet Earth first
set foot upon the moon, July 1969, A.D. We came in peace for all mankind.” A
helpful timeline – “a century of flight and space exploration,” including tragedies as well as successes – ends the book, a vivid journey in space
exploration. Ages 5 up.
Related resources may be found at: TeachingBooks.net
What a gift Langston Hughes gives us all
with his collection of poetry for young people: The Dream Keeper and Other
Poems. First published in 1932, the volume gathers sixty-six poems in six
roughly thematic sections; wonderful scratchboard images by Brian Pinkney grace
every page. Hughes spent many of his growing-up years in the Midwest but
traveled the world as an adult, eventually settling in Harlem. His poetry
speaks directly and powerfully of African American experience and culture and yet
is affectingly universal. A number of his short poems are recognized by people
everywhere as they capture, in the words of Lee Bennett Hopkins’s introduction,
“Hopes, dreams, aspiration, life and love…for each and every one of us.” It
would be very hard to select just one favorite poem, though the opening line of
“I, Too” conveys a sense of Hughes’s frequent theme: “I, too, sing America.”
And one stanza of his poem “Dream” reads “Hold fast to Dreams / For when dreams
go / Life is a barren field / Frozen with snow.” In her personal note at the
end of the collection, Augusta Baker remembers her friend with “Hughes was
generous with himself,” and we are lucky beneficiaries. Ages 8 up.
Related activities and interviews may be found at: TeachingBooks.net
Jane Addams’s life and work over decades of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries made a difference both in the lives of countless people in the Chicago area, where she lived and worked, and to the philosophy and profession of social work. From a prosperous family, she was aware that not everyone had the advantages she enjoyed. In The House That Jane Built: A Story About Jane Addams, author Tanya Lee Stone weaves together details from Jane’s young life with the trajectory of her education and travels and eventually her dedication to the establishment in 1889 of Hull House, known as America’s first settlement house. Hull House, modeled on a settlement house in London that Jane had visited, grew rapidly in its outreach to diverse neighborhoods, particularly to immigrant families hampered by language and lack of work opportunities. Combining a broad and empathetic understanding of social realities with an appreciation and respect for the value of arts and culture to people from all walks of life, Addams encouraged research and study of neighborhood conditions as well as hands-on engagement in everyday life. Illustrations by Kathryn Brown capture well the time period and the sense of Jane’s character and activities; an author’s note provides additional details of Addams’s remarkable accomplishments. For one, she was the first woman in our country to receive the Nobel Prize. This picture book biography is a fine introduction to a principled life of activism and social democracy.
Ages 6–9.
Related activities and interviews may be found at: TeachingBooks.net
