Poems for Children Nowhere Near Old Enough to Vote - Hardcover

Carl Sandburg Family Trust

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679889906 ISBN 13: 9780679889908

Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers, 1999

Synopsis

"Poets are sometimes forgetful. They write poems and if these verses are ahead of their time or quite unlike their other poetry, they put them aside for another day....Something like this seems to have happened with Carl Sandburg's collection Poems for Children Nowhere Near Old Enough to Vote." --From the introduction

These poems, recently discovered by Sandburg scholars George and Willene Hendrick, invite us to see objects as familiar as chairs, clocks, and pencils--or our very own eyes, ears, and nose--in an arresting and fresh new way. In this collection, Sandburg has fun teasing the imagination and making us smile, while Istvan Banyai plays a jazzy accompaniment in pen and ink (with a little help from the computer). For children ages eight to eighty, here is an intriguing little volume as bright and beckoning as the twenty-first century!

About this title

Review:

Sixty years ago, Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)--America's unofficial poet laureate, Pulitzer Prize winner, biographer, and historian--wrote a batch of children's poetry, but it wasn't until 1999 that Sandburg scholars George and Willene Hendrick found these 19 lively prose poems amidst thousands of yellowed manuscripts at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In Poems for Children Nowhere Near Old Enough to Vote we learn that "Eggs may speak to buttons--that is correct. / Buttons, however, must not speak to eggs." Sandburg, like most children, also enjoys musing on various body parts: "The nose is to breathe and to smell with. / Eyes need two and ears need two but one nose / is enough if it has two nostrils." In other poems, he revels in defining and exploring terms that we often use, letting his imagination wander through each word's possibilities: "Stumbling is where you walk and find you are not walking." "Manners is when you know how to eat without being bashful." "Music is when your ears like what you hear." Familiar objects such as wheels, clocks, chairs, and pencils are all subject to Sandburg's simple, childlike "write-down-everything-this-makes-you-think-of" approach to poetry.

In the hands of the whimsical Istvan Banyai (of Zoom and Re-Zoom), Sandburg's poems meet their visual match. Banyai's basic, black-and-white, pen-and-ink illustrations--combined with computer-generated stretched, condensed, curved, or diagonal type--enliven and enhance the poet's wordplay with equally inventive results. As Sandburg gleefully investigates the concept of chair legs, Banyai shows a chair casually crossing its legs. As Sandburg pontificates on pencils ("Pencils too pointed break the points and / then laugh at you"), Banyai sketches the antics of a pencil-headed man (who doesn't seem to enjoy the sharpening process). This unusual collection will no doubt encourage children to open their eyes to a nonliteral universe, and perhaps jumpstart an interest in creative writing. (That's right--poems don't have to rhyme!) (Ages 7 and older) --Karin Snelson

About the Author:

Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) is fondly remembered as America's unofficial poet laureate. He was also a biographer and historian. His monumental six-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln won the Pulitzer Prize for history in 1940, and in 1951 his Complete Poems won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry.

Istvan Banyai, born and educated in Hungary, came to the United States in 1981. His striking and innovative illustrations have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Time, The New Yorker, and Rolling Stone. He made his debut in children's publishing in 1995 with the award-winning wordless picture book Zoom, followed by REM: Rapid Eye Movement and Re-Zoom.

George Hendrick is Professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Willene Hendrick is an independent scholar. The Hendricks have for many years been closely associated with the Sandburg estate and the Sandburg collection at the University of Illinois.

About this edition

• Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0679889906
• ISBN 13: 9780679889908
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 48
• Illustrator: Istvan Banyai