Angel to Angel: A Mother's Gift of Love - Hardcover

Myers, Walter Dean

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060277211 ISBN 13: 9780060277215

Publisher: Harpercollins Childrens Books, 1998

Synopsis

An award-winning author of Brown Angels and Glorious Angels combines antique photographs and lovely verse into a picture book that celebrates the bonds between mothers and their children.

About this title

About the Author

Walter Dean Myers is the author of many highly acclaimed books, including Scorpions, a 1989 Newbery Honor Book; Now Is Your Time: The African-American Struggle for Freedom, winner of the 1992 Coretta Scott King Author Award; The Mouse Rap, an ALA Best Book for Young Adults; and Brown Angels: An Album of Pictures and Verse. In 1994, he received the ALA's Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement in writing for young adults. Mr. Myers lives in New Jersey with his family.In His Own Words...

I am a product of Harlem and of the values, color, toughness and caring that I found there as a child. I learned my flat jump shot in the church basement and got my first kiss during recess at Bible school. I played the endless street games kids played in the pre-television days and paid enough attention to candy and junk food to dutifully alarm my mother.

From my foster parents, the Deans, I received the love that was ultimately to strengthen me, even when I had forgotten its source. It was my foster mother, a half Indian-half German woman, who taught me to read, though she herself was barely literate.

I had a speech difficulty but didn't view it as anything special. It wasn't necessary for me to be much of a social creature once I discovered books. Books took me, not so much to foreign lands and fanciful adventures, but to a place within myself that I have been constantly exploring ever since.

The George Bruce Branch of the public Library was my most treasured place. I couldn't believe my luck in discovering what I enjoyed most -- reading -- was free. And I was tough enough to carry the books home through the streets without too many incidents.

At sixteen it seemed a good idea to leave school, and so I did. On my seventeenth birthday I joined the army. After the army there were jobs -- some good, some bad, few worth mentioning. Leaving school seemed less like a good idea.

Writing for me has been many things. It was a way to overcome the hindrance of speech problems as I tried to reach out to the world. It was a way of establishing my humanity in a world that often ignores the humanity of those in less favored positions. It was a way to make a few extra dollars when they were badly needed.

What I want to do with the writing keeps changing, too. Perhaps I just get clearer in what it is I am doing. I'm sure that after I'm dead someone will lay it all out nicely. I'd hate to see what kind of biography my cat, Askia, would write about me. Probably something like "Walter Dean Myers had enormous feet, didn't feed me on time, and often sat in my favorite chair." At any rate, what I think I'm doing now is rediscovering the innocence of children that I once took for granted. I cannot relive it or reclaim it, but I can expose it and celebrate it in the books I write. I really like people -- I mean I really like people -- and children are some of the best people I know.

I've always felt it a little pretentious to write about yourself, but it's not too bad if you don't write too much.-- Walter Dean Myers

From School Library Journal

Grade 4 UpAThis lovely photo/poetry montage repeats the visual and textual themes of Myers's Brown Angels (1993) and Glorious Angels (1995, both HarperCollins). The endpapers are a wallpaper pattern of muted green and gray, and silver floral flourishes border the pages of black-and-white or sepia photographs featuring African-American women and children. The 10 distinctly styled poems may at first glance seem not to have anything in common with their accompanying picture groupings, but meaning is subtly reflected back and forth between sight and sound. With the first poem, "Angel to Angel," the big, white hair ribbons worn by the girls in one of the photographs look almost like angel wings. One of the illustrations for "Trees" depicts a mother with three very young children standing around her. The setting is urban, with not a tree in sight. However, the woman is like the tall trunk of an oak ("I am a tree/Strong limbed and deeply rooted"), and the children are like thick barked roots that resemble branches growing out from its base. The verse is varied, from the simple, descriptive tone of "Furniture" to the rhymed, chorus-filled expression of "Don't Mess with Grandmama and Me." This slim, pretty volume will appeal to anyone who appreciates the relationships between words and pictures, and between mothers and children.APeg Solonika, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, PA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harpercollins Childrens Books
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0060277211
• ISBN 13: 9780060277215
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 40