Poetry for Young People: Langston Hughes - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1402718454 ISBN 13: 9781402718458

Publisher: Union Square Kids, 2006

Synopsis

Sterling proudly announces an exciting and vibrant addition to Poetry for Young People: The first African-American themed book in the series, featuring the poems of the extraordinary Langston Hughes. Edited by the two leading experts on Hughes’s work, and illustrated by the brilliant Benny Andrews, this very special volume is one to treasure forever.
 
A much-requested book that was years in the making...and well worth the wait. One of the central figures in the Harlem Renaissance—the flowering of black culture that took place in the 1920s and 30s—Langston Hughes captured the soul of his people, and gave voice to their concerns about race and social justice. His magnificent and powerful words still resonate today: that’s why it’s so important for young people to have access to his poems. Now they do, in a splendid volume edited and illustrated by a top-caliber team who are simply the best in their fields.
 
The introduction, biography, and annotations come from Arnold Rampersad, a Professor and Dean at Stanford University, who has written The Life of Langston Hughes, and David Roessel, co-editor with Professor Rampersad of The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes and editor of the Langston Hughes collection in Knopf’s Everyman series. Benny Andrews—a painter, printmaker, and arts advocate whose work is in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Smithsonian, among others—has created gallery-quality illustrations that pulse with energy and add rich dimension to the poems.
 
Among the anthologized poems are Hughes’s best-known and most loved works: “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”; “Aunt Sue’s Stories”; “Danse Africaine”; “Mother to Son”; “My People”; “Words Like Freedom”; “Harlem”; and “I, Too”—his sharp, pointed response to Walt Whitman’s earlier “I Hear America Singing.”
 
Poetry for Young People: Langston Hughes is a publishing event for all to celebrate.
A Selection of the Scholastic Book Club.
 

About this title

About the Author:

Arnold Rampersad is the author of the widely acclaimed two-volume biography The Life of Langston Hughes as well as Days of Grace: A Memoir, co-authored with Arthur Ashe, and Jackie Robinson: A Biography. He has also edited several books, among them The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes (with David Roessel). He is professor of English and senior associate dean at Stanford University, an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Philosophical Society, and a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation fellowship. David Roessel is the editor or co-editor of several books on American poetry and drama, including The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes (with Arnold Rampersad), and Poems/Hughes. He is also the author of In Byron's Shadow: Modern Greece in the English, and American Imagination, winner of the Modern Language Association Prize for Independent Scholars. Benny Andrews' work is in the permanent collections of more than 30 major museums, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. A recipient of the Abby Award for lifetime achievement in the arts, Mr. Andrews was a member of the National Academy of Design and also served as director of the Visual Arts Program for the National Endowment for the Arts. He died in November, 2006.

From School Library Journal:

Grade 4 Up This charming collection of 26 poems is vibrantly illustrated with depictions of African Americans in varied settings. Homesick Blues shows a saxophone player conjuring up a locomotive at a railroad station. Harlem features a line of people waiting at a bus stop. A poignant rendering of a child watching from outside the fence surrounding a carousel accompanies Merry-Go-Round. For I, Too, a jubilant man leaps, arms and legs stretched out, and for Dream Variations, a man is poised on tiptoe, arms outstretched with the word DREAMS dripping from his fingertips into a heap on the floor. A four-page introduction tells about Hughes's life, setting the context for the poems that follow. Each selection includes a brief introduction, many recounting Hughes's own thoughts about it, and footnotes explain dialect and historical terms such as Jim Crow. The paintings include folk-art and African influences and some minor surrealistic touches, with bright colors and exaggerated limbs on the human figures. This will be a welcome introduction to Hughes's poetry for elementary students, and it includes sufficient detail to make it useful and enjoyable for older students. With its vivid illustrations and wealth of information, Milton Meltzer's biography Langston Hughes (Millbrook, 1997) is a good companion volume. Joyce Adams Burner, Hillcrest Library, Prairie Village, KS
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About this edition

• Publisher: Union Square Kids
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1402718454
• ISBN 13: 9781402718458
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 48
• Editor: Roessel David, Rampersad Arnold
• Illustrator: Andrews Benny