The Soldier's Friend: Walt Whitman's Extraordinary Service in the American Civil War

A Kirkus Best Picture Book of the Year

Walt Whitman is celebrated as an iconic American poet, but few know of the crucial and heroic role he played tending to the wounded and dying in Civil War hospitals. This nonfiction picture book highlights Whitman’s compassion and teaches an important lesson about empathy, making this a perfect social-emotional learning title for young readers.

★ Kirkus Reviews, starred review
★ Publishers Weekly, starred review

In December of 1862, Walt Whitman left Brooklyn, New York, for the war-torn South after seeing his brother's name on a list of wounded Union soldiers. What he found on the battlefields completely changed his life, as he came face to face with not only the wounded, but the dying. Whitman spent the next three years working part-time in Washington, DC, visiting and ministering to soldiers in the city’s many military hospitals. Caring for the sick and dying was not easy, but Whitman was committed to his chosen service. He became known as "the soldiers’ friend," and was bound—in his own way—to save and heal the America he wrote about and loved so deeply.

New York Times-bestselling author Gary Golio and Caldecott Honor artist E. B. Lewis bring Whitman’s story and his passion for America to life, complete with quotes from Whitman’s works, and extensive backmatter, which includes a bibliography and photographs.

A visual artist, musician, and psychotherapist, Gary Golio is the author of the New York Times-bestselling picture book Jimi: Sounds Like a Rainbow, which received the 2011 Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award. His other books, most of which profile important artists, include When Bob Met Woody: The Story of the Young Bob Dylan; Strange Fruit: Billie Holiday and the Power of a Protest Song; Sonny Rollins Plays the Bridge; and Everywhere Beauty Is Harlem.

The recipient of a Caldecott Honor and an Orbis Pictus Award, along with many others, E. B. Lewis is the illustrator of more than seventy books for children. His Calkins Creek titles include Invincible, Seeking Freedom, and Lizzie Demands a Seat, which won Bank Street College of Education's Flora Stieglitz Straus Award for excellence in nonfiction, along with many other honors. He is also the illustrator of Everywhere Beauty Is Harlem, another collaboration with author Gary Golio.