The Great Migration, Journey to the North

Eloise Greenfield, The Great Migration, Journey to the North, illustrated by Jan Spivey Gilchrist, Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 2011

Eloise Greenfield, winner of the 11th NCTE Award for Excellence in Poetry, and award-winning artist and writer Jan Spivey Gilchrist have collaborated on a book of poems inspired by a little talked about period of American history. Train travel is almost foreign to today’s children. Yet a train ticket led to a better life in the North for hundreds of thousands of African American children in the early part of the 20th century. The Great Migration, Journey to the North chronicles such a trip in nine poems. Collage artwork using archival material lends historical authenticity to the collection. An introduction tells Greenfield’s own story of her family’s migration.

Greenfield’s free verse lets us witness a family’s goodbyes – goodbyes to the land, to inequality and to the Ku Klux Klan.

Goodbye, crazy signs, telling me
where I can go, what I can do.
I hear that train whistling
my name. Don’t worry, train,
I’m ready.

The poems book us a seat on the overnight trip with all its uncertainties.

I hope they’re right.
I think they’re right.
I know they’re right.

Finally, we arrive in Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Washington or another northern city where

…the people keep coming,
keep coming, keep on coming,
filling up the cities with
their hopes and their courage.
And their dreams.

The rhythm in each of Greenfield’s poems lets us hear the click clack of train wheels on the track. We feel the hope in the hearts of the travelers. Gilchrist’s haunting illustrations combine layers of artwork and archival photos. The results were achieved through labor intensive methods without computer graphics. They draw us into the poems as if we are watching a documentary. One moving illustration plants grainy photos of African Americans in a field like ghostly witnesses to the train’s passing.

The Great Migration, Journey to the North is a stirring account in verse of a period that opened up opportunities for America’s Black citizens and changed American history. The jacket flap says the audience is Ages 3-8. The subject matter is more suited for an older audience, such as Grades 2-5.

The NCTE has this profile about Greenfield.

Gilchrist's profile is on the Herman Agency's website.

Steven Withrow interviews Eloise Greenfield at Poetry at Play.

Welcome to Poetry Friday

At a lovely Lessons and Carols service this month, I discovered a poignant poem by Dorothy Parker. Composer Nicholas White turned the poem into a carol.

The poem was a total surprise. I had thought of Parker as a witty writer and sometimes dark and even sarcastic. But this poem helps us imagine what a new mother in a stable may have longed for.

Prayer for a New Mother

The things she knew, let her forget again-
The voices in the sky, the fear, the cold,
The gaping shepherds, and the queer old men
Piling their clumsy gifts of foreign gold.

Let her have laughter with her little one;
Teach her the endless, tuneless songs to sing,
Grant her her right to whisper to her son
The foolish names one dare not call a king.

Keep from her dreams the rumble of a crowd,
The smell of rough-cut wood, the trail of red,
The thick and chilly whiteness of the shroud
That wraps the strange new body of the dead.

Ah, let her go, kind Lord, where mothers go
And boast his pretty words and ways, and plan
The proud and happy years that they shall know
Together, when her son is grown a man.

Schongauer painted The Holy Family. See more of his gorgeous art here.

Thank you to Dori who is hosting Poetry Friday today at Dori Reads.

2012 Award-Winning Books Challenge

A Winter Solstice Commitment

I keep intending to read those award-winners I’ve missed. Now I’ve found my opportunity. I joined the 2012 Award-Winning Books Reading Challenge sponsored by Gathering Books.

I’ll read and write reviews to recommend award-winning books right here on my blog. I’m headed for the Silver Medal level, between 11 and 25 books. The books can be for children or adults. What fun!

Check out this challenge at Gathering Books. Local and regional awards and recognition count also, not just national and international awards.

Hosts Myra and Iphigene are Poetry Friday contributors, always posting phenomenal poems from creative poets we might not find on our own.

Wish me good reads as I add old and new award winning books to my reading journal. I’ll take your recommendations, too!

Tribute to Father of Frances

Poached egg on toast, why do you shiver
With such a funny little quiver?

So sings the adorable picky eater badger named Frances in Bread and Jam for Frances when she would rather have

Jam on biscuits, jam on toast,
Jam is the thing that I like most.

As others will, I pay tribute this Poetry Friday to Russell Hoban, author of the beloved Frances books, the classic The Mouse and His Child and a host of other children’s titles. Hoban passed away on December 13.

Hoban’s books were part of my children’s childhoods and I love the books, too. But I did not know that Russell Hoban wrote poetry.

I’m captivated by the sounds in these lines from "Long, Lone" in Hoban’s book The Last of the Wallendas.

Long, long, long and lone
Is the selkie's song when the storm winds moan,
is the sigh of the sea as it rubs the stone,
is the word of the sea that lives in the bone.

“Ice Bears” is a haunting poem that challenges the reader to think of the effects of climate change.

Huge, silent-moving like
white dreams hungering for
the yester-prey,
what will they do when
the ice is gone?

Read the whole poem here. Don't miss the last stanza!

I’ll be reading more of Russell Hoban in the future. Lawrence Downes wrote this editorial about Hoban in the NY Times.

Thanks to Book Aunt for today's Poetry Friday round-up.