"Simple poems by the famous poet, Nikki Giovanni, are paired beautifully with colorful drawings that will pull the young reader into their magic. . . . A lovely first book of poems." ―Children's Literature
Quiet . . .
like a quilt on a feather bed . . .
and frost on the window . . .
we write our names knowing . . .
the sun will melt them off
But the sun is so quiet . . .
that we don't care
we smile
―from Connie by Nikki Giovanni
The quiet and noisy, wintery and sometimes sunny poems in The Sun Is So Quiet will always make you smile. Nikki Giovanni describes riding rainbows, tiptoeing through strawberry patches, licking chocolaty fingers, snuggling under covers, and many other wonderful childhood moments. Ashley Bryan's warmest, most colorful illustrations make each page look like a bright, beaming smile.
Together, they have created a collection that you can linger over like a peppermint candy cane or enjoy as quickly as a snowflake melts on your nose.
Nikki Giovanni wrote many books of poetry for children and adults, including
Rosa, a Caldecott Honor book,
Lincoln and Douglass,
The Genie in the Jar, and
Ego-tripping and Other Poems for Young People. Giovanni called herself, "a Black American, a daughter, a mother, a professor of English." She was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, and grew up in Lincoln Heights, an all-black suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio. She studied at Fisk University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Columbia University. She published her first book of poetry,
Black Feeling Black Talk, in 1968, and since then became one of America’s most widely read poets. Oprah Winfrey named her as one of her twenty-five “Living Legends.” Her autobiography
Gemini was a finalist for the National Book Award, and several of her books received NAACP Image Awards. She received twenty-five honorary degrees, and numerous other distinctions, including being named Woman of the Year by
Mademoiselle Magazine,
The Ladies Home Journal and
Ebony, the first recipient of the Rosa L. Parks Woman of Courage Award, and the Langston Hughes Medal for poetry. Nikki Giovanni lived in Christiansburg, Virginia, where she was a professor of English at Virginia Polytechnic Institute. She died in 2024 at the age of 81.
Ashley Bryan (1923-2022) was a multi-award-winning children’s book author and illustrator with several Coretta Scott King Awards, a Newbery Honor, and a Children’s Literature Legacy Award (formerly the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award) among his honors. Named one of New York Public Library’s Literary Lions in 2008, he also taught art at such institutions as Dalton School, Philadelphia College of Art, Queens College, and Dartmouth College.
Telling stories of African folklore and the African-American experience for more than sixty years, his books include Beat the Story-Drum, Pum-Pum, Beautiful Blackbird, Freedom Over Me: Eleven Slaves, Their Lives and Dreams Brought to Life and Infinite Hope: A Black Artist’s Journey from World War II to Peace. He also contributed his collage art to Richard Wright’s Black Boy, Nikki Giovanni’s The Sun Is So Quiet (a Parents’ Choice Award-winner), and Langston Hughes’s Carol of the Crown King: Nativity Poems among many others.
