If you want to combine history and poetry, this is the book for you! All the way from the dinosaurs to September 11, American history is summarized into 41 short poems. It begins appropriately with, 'The First,' a ditty about dinosaurs ('The first Americans who roamed the prairie/ Were kind of big and kind of scary'), and ends with 'The Lady,' a salute to the Statue of Liberty, which Shields casts as witness to the destruction of the World Trade Center. Poems about the Wright brothers, the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, and 'The Great War' (WWI) are among those that fall along the timeline running across the top of the pages. Richard Thompson, a political cartoonist, offers appropriate doses of humor and poignancy in his illustrations accompanying the poems.
Similar books: Mural on Second Avenue, and Other City Poems by Lilian Moore; Heroes and She-roes: Poems of Amazing and Everyday Heroes by J. Patrick Lewis
Date read: 4/13/2009
ISBN-10: 1593541201
ISBN-13: 9781593541200
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