Poetry Friday: Twelve Rounds to Glory

Twelve Rounds to Glory: The Story of Muhammad Ali
By Charles R. Smith, Jr.
Illustrated by Bryan Collier

Candlewick Press, 2007

This book is for upper middle grade readers and young adult readers. But the layout of the book is like a picture book. It’s obviously not a picture book because of the length and the content. It is intended for older readers.

This is a biography written in verse. The book is divided into twelve chapters, or rounds. I was truly amazed at what a rhyming wizard Smith is. He has the poems rhyme, but they don’t appear sing-songy or cutesy. We learn much about Muhammad Ali through Smith’s verse. The dust jacket says that it was inspired by rap. It’s also written in second person almost like the author is talking directly to Ali about himself.

Bryan Collier has such a distinct style of illustrating. I enjoyed seeing the poems illustrated in full color. Many of the biographies in verse that I have read in the past weren’t illustrated in full color, so Collier’s illustrations added another dimension.

Smith writes about Ali’s fight with Joe Frazier:

“You have ascended the mountaintop
and must now reach its peak;
your body is tired
but your spirit is not weak.
Your rubbery legs
carry you to meet Joe,
but your weighted-down fists
manage to strike blow
after blow
after blow
after blow
to your opponent…”

This book won the Coretta Scott King Honor Award in 2008.

Hear Smith read some of his poems here.

Biblio File has the Poetry Friday Roundup today.

The Boy Who Dared

The Boy Who Dared: A Novel Based on the True Story of a Hitler Youth

by Susan Campbell Bartoletti

Scholastic Press, 2008

Remember back to reading Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler's Shadow. Susan Campbell Bartoletti also wrote this book. It was a nonfiction book (or "informational book" according to the Sibert Award committee). Hitler Youth won a Newbery Honor and a Sibert Honor. It's a fascinating book that really delves into the lives of specific young adults who were part of the Hitler Youth--those who were in support of Hitler and were trained (or brainwashed) at an early age to serve and submit to Hitler. However, a few began to see Hitler for who he was. They secretly rebelled. Some of them even paid a high price.

One of those young men was Helmuth Hubener. This book is about his life. Unlike Bartoletti's Hitler Youth which was nonfiction, this book is historical fiction. Bartoletti tells Helmuth's story in flashback. It begins with Helmuth in jail on death row. The jail scenes are set apart in italics, but most of the story is set in the past as Helmuth remembers his life.

Helmuth was once a Hitler Youth. But then he began to listen to the BBC German broadcast. It was forbidden for Germans to listen to it, but he did anyway. He realized how different it was from the government sponsored broadcast and he began to take notes. He and two other friends began to write pamphlets telling the truth. Helmuth's Morman faith and his activities with the Hitler Youth seemed to be in conflict. When Helmuth was finally captured, tortured, and put on trial, and ultimately died, he died knowing he stood for what he believed in and spoke up for those who were dying without a reason.

Just like Bartoletti's nonfiction books, this one is impeccibly researched. There are photographs of Helmuth and a timeline of Third Reich events. She provides an extensive author's note where she delineates what is real/factual and where she has filled in the gaps as a novelist.

Her writing is so memorable, just like in all of her other historical fiction novels. Here is a brief description from the jail cell:

Footsteps. A rustling sound at the heavy blue door. Helmuth
takes a great gulp of air. His heart pounds in his ears. The small latched
window slides open. Please, God, no, not the executioner.

He sees an eye, a nose, half a mouth, half a face. The morning guard.
Helmuth breathes again. Part of a prisoner's punishment is not knowing his execution date.

This is a must read historical fiction novel for 2008 and would be a perfect pairing with the nonfiction Hitler Youth for students studying the Holocaust.

Moping and Groaning

Well, guess what I have done this weekend? Nothing. That's right. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Zero. I have made a permanent indent on the couch and on the bed. I have been sick, sick, sick. I was finally able to get a doctor's appointment for 11:00. Fever, chills, cough, repeat. That's what I'm going to tell the doctor. Well, I shouldn't say I did NOTHING. I submerged my misery into 1,192 pages of Bella and Edward, Stephanie Meyer bliss. I read New Moon and Eclipse in the last two days because they have been calling to me ever since I read Twilight over the summer.

What should I have done this weekend?
1) Helped my husband paint my office
2) Graded undergrad papers that were due on Friday
3) Written my assignments for my postmodernism class that I'm taking
4) Taken my daughter outside to play
5) Enjoyed my weekend.

Oh well, there are many thing a high fever will keep you from doing (although it didn't keep me from sinking my teeth into Bella's love life).

Remember the Civil Rights Movement on Martin Luther King Jr. Day

In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day I wanted to bring you a review of a very moving historical fiction novel. Many people have heard of Ruby Bridges. The picture book The Story of Ruby Bridges by Robert Coles brought her story to children. The movie “Ruby Bridges” also brought her story to TV.

A new historical fiction novel, My Mother the Cheerleader, by Robert Sharenow, brings the story of a little girl who used to go to school in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans before integration. Louise’s mother runs a boarding house. Louise has to do many of the chores around the boarding house while her mother protests the integration of her school. Her mother is one of “The Cheerleaders” who screams racial slurs at Ruby as she goes into school each day. Her mother is one of the ladies who spreads hate and continues the cycle of discrimination.

I had never even considered the story of the protestors, nor did I realize how hate-filled and violent it really was. I always knew that Ruby Bridges was brave, but I had no idea what horrific things she had to see and hear on her way to school every day. However, Ruby Bridges is really not the main focus of the story. Louise is the main focus of the story. She tries to grapple with her mother’s lifestyle, attempts to figure out who she is, and how she feels about the people in her life.

When a visitor from New York comes to stay at her mother’s boarding house, her world is opened up to new ideas and she realizes that the rest of the world does not think like the people in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans.

This is an eye-opening, thought-provoking book. And most importantly it is hopeful. Louise realizes that just because one is raised in an environment of discrimination doesn’t mean it has to stay that way.

My Mother the Cheerleader
By Robert Sharenow
Laura Geringer Books, 2007

A Northern Light

A Northern Light
By Jennifer Donnelly
Harcourt, 2003

I mentioned in a previous post that I received a recommendation to read this book from a bookseller at a local used bookstore. When I got home that evening to request the book from my local library, I noticed that it was already on my “to read” list. I just hadn’t read it yet. The bookseller at the bookstore absolutely gushed over this book just telling me about it. She was so moved by it, I knew I needed to read it.

The story is set in the Adirondack Mountains in New York. It is set around the murder of Grace Brown, a well-known murder that took place in the early 1900s. It was also this same murder that inspired An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser—a book I loved in college.

Even though the book is set around this infamous murder, the story is really about Mattie Gokey, a young girl who is raising her younger siblings because her mother has died and her father is emotionally unattached to the family.

What endears the reader to Mattie is that she manages to carry the weight of the family on her shoulders at such a young age, but she also manages to be an excellent student and a promising writer. She excels in her exams in school and has the opportunity to go to college—something her father will not hear of.

In the midst of it all, she falls in love with a childhood friend, and is engaged to be married. As time goes on, she is not sure that she wants to be a wife, mother, and homemaker if it means she will not be able to pursue her dream of being a writer.

Mattie’s love of words and writing are a beautiful thread throughout the whole book. Donnelly titles the chapters with Mattie’s Words of the Day. Mattie looks up obscure words in the dictionary, memorizes their meanings, and then tries to use them in context during the course of the day. We learn her love of language, her love of writing, and her desire to get out of the life she is living.

Mattie eventually goes to work at the Glenmore, a hotel that is the place that Grace Brown and Chester Gillette are staying. There she learns Grace’s story, and begins to have the courage to pursue her dream of being a writer.

Donnelly makes Mattie's struggle honest. She struggles with trying to honor her mother's dying wish--to take care of her siblings. She wants to pursue her dream, but she is also in love, and she knows that once she marries that she'll no longer live her own life. Her struggles are real, and the decisions she makes do not come easy.

I agree wholeheartedly the enthusiasm with which this book was recommended to me. This story will stay with me for a long time.

Awards it has won:

Carnegie Medal
Printz Honor
Los Angeles Times Book Prize
Borders Original Voices Award

Biographical Poetry

The Poet Slave of Cuba: A Biography of Juan Francisco Manzano
By Margarita Engle
Art by Sean Qualls
Henry Holt, 2006

This biography in verse is a story of a Cuban slave who loved poetry so much, he suffered for it. Engle tells the life story of Juan Francisco Manzano from his young childhood through the day he escapes slavery. Juan Francisco Manzano was a Cuban slave in the early 1800s. His mother was also a slave, but was given her freedom when she married. Juan had to live with the owner, who mistreated him, and was forbidden to see his mother for years. Juan managed to love words, write words, and had people sneaking him books. Manzano’s story is beautifully told through verse. Engle says she knew Manzano’s story HAD to be told in verse since it was his lifeblood. His story is told through poems in different voices including his own voice and those of his mother, his stepfather, the mistress, the master, and their son. Engle’s poetry is beautiful and really makes the slave poet’s life vivid, sad, and hopeful.
Engle includes a bibliography, a historical note, and translations of some of Manzano’s poems.