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Summary
Summary
Early Sunday morning, when even the Mississippi seems too tired to roll, a single saxophone player swaying on the Esplanade wails the river's long story, black-coffee bitter, warm-beignet sweet to anyone awake enough to listen. Come take a tuneful trip down the great Mississippi River The Mississippi River is as long with stories as it is with water. From its mouth at Lake Itasca, Minnesota, the river glides through cities and villages, farmlands and lakes, picking up tales of the past and present-all in the course of a week. By the time it has reached the Gulf Coast Delta in Louisiana, the river has traveled 2,300 miles on its historical, cultural journey.This lyrically written and richly illustrated picture book pays tribute to America's most legendary and celebrated river.
Author Notes
Marilyn Singer was born in the Bronx, New York, on October 3, 1948, and lived most of her early life in North Massapequa on Long Island. She attended Queens College, City University of New York as an English major and education student, and for her junior year, attended Reading University, in England. She holds a bachelor's degree in English from Queens and a MA in Communications from New York University. Marilyn Singer had been teaching English in New York City high schools for several years when she began writing in 1974. Initially, she wrote film notes, catalogues, teacher's guides and filmstrips. She also began looking into magazine writing. Her article proposals were not very successful, but she did manage to have some of her poetry published. Then one day she penned a story featuring talking insects she'd made up when she was eight. Encouraged by the responses she got, she wrote more stories and in 1976 her first book, The Dog Who Insisted He Wasn't, was published.
Since then, Marilyn has published more than 50 books for children and young adults. In addition to a rich collection of fiction picture books, Singer has also produced a wide variety of nonfiction works for young readers as well as several poetry volumes in picture book format. Additionally, Singer has edited volumes of short stories for young adult readers, including Stay True: Short Stories for Strong Girls and I Believe in Water: Twelve Brushes with Religion.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
School Library Journal Review
K-Gr 4-This colorful picture book takes readers on a cruise down Old Man River, beginning in Minnesota on Monday: "A little stream among so many streams./A little girl wiggles her toes/in the shallow water and wonders,/How long before we're big and strong, little Mississippi?/How many miles? How many days?" The journey ends on Sunday in Louisiana at the river's mouth, where a boy ponders: "Will I ever see where you start, big Mississippi?/Will I ever tell where you end/and the wide, wide sea begins?" The poetic text highlights a few important locations and historical events along the way. Lessac's primitive gouache illustrations brightly reflect each day's trip, showing children on the riverbanks engaging in interesting activities while barges, steamboats, and tugboats float by. The book opens with a map of the river's entire span, and every spread includes a smaller view of the day's featured area. Two pages of appended notes fill in some details about the places and events referred to in the narrative. Beautifully executed in text and illustrations, this title offers an enjoyable read as well as an educational one. It begs to be used in a unit on the Mississippi, perhaps in conjunction with Jill Esbaum's Ste-ee-e-eamboat a-comin'! (Farrar, 2005).-Judith Constantinides, formerly at East Baton Rouge Parish Main Library, LA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Horn Book Review
Lessac's primitive art reinforces the concept that the Mississippi River is an integral part of our heritage as readers follow a poetic text that takes them from Lake Itasca in Minnesota to the Louisiana Delta. The background necessary to understand metaphorical and historical references reaches beyond the audience and is not explained in the afterword. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
This unique introduction to Old Man River combines poetry, art, history and geography into a multifaceted whole that just keeps rolling along down the path of the mighty river's progress. The volume's innovative design includes 14 non-rhyming poems that follow it through the course of a week from its beginnings in Minnesota all the way to New Orleans. Each poem and accompanying double-page-spread illustration offers a different view and more information about it, including important cities, key historical facts and insights into riverboat traffic and transportation. A small inset map of the pertinent city and state under discussion is integrated into each illustration, with a helpful larger map on the title page showing the ten states touched by the mighty river. Some poems include children experiencing it in different ways: boating, fishing, hiking and listening to jazz in New Orleans, while other poems introduce famous people who lived along the river. Vibrant gouache illustrations in a naïve style help bring the Mississippi and its surroundings to life. (author's note) (Picture book/poetry. 5-9) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Gr. 2-4, younger for reading aloud. In On the Same Day in March 0 (2000), collaborators Singer and Lessac highlighted locations around the globe to drive home variations in climate, culture, and landscape. A waterway as mighty as the Mississippi similarly contains multitudes, and here it supports 14 snapshotlike poems charting the river's progress from its source in Minnesota to its Gulf of Mexico delta. In a folk-art style studded with painstaking details (tiny bargeworkers in St. Paul, a baby gator in swampy Arkansas), Lessac captures both the changing environment and the water's chameleon-like shifts in color. Although labeled maps give children a clear sense of the big picture, the premise occasionally seems as cloudy as Big Muddy itself. There is no stable point of view to make the "journey" concrete, and the poems confusingly mix fictional situations and historical references that are reliant on the endnote for clarification. Still, the collection's interdisciplinary applications are numerous, and creative teachers will surely find ways to extend its usefulness both above and below the age level of the core audience. --Jennifer Mattson Copyright 2005 Booklist
