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Summary
Summary
The moving story of how the first published African-American female poet regained what had been taken away from her and from slaves everywhere: a voice of her own.
"We'll call her Phillis."
In 1761, a young African girl was sold to the Wheatley family in Boston, who named her Phillis after the slave schooner that had carried her. Kidnapped from her home in Africa and shipped to America, she'd had everything taken from her - her family, her name, and her language.
But Phillis Wheatley was no ordinary young girl. She had a passion to learn, and the Wheatleys encouraged her, breaking with unwritten rule in New England to keep slaves illiterate. Amid the tumult of the Revolutionary War, Phillis Wheatley became a poet and ultimately had a book of verse published, establishing herself as the first African American woman poet this country had ever known. She also found what had been taken away from her and from slaves everywhere: a voice of her own.
Author Notes
Kathryn Lasky was born in Indianapolis, Indiana on June 24, 1944, and knew she wanted to be a writer from the time she was ten. She majored in English in college and after graduation wrote for various magazines and taught. Her first book, I Have Four Names for My Grandfather, was published while she was teaching.
She has written more than seventy books for children and young adults on everything from historical fiction to picture books and nonfiction books including the Dear America books and the Guardians of Ga'Hoole series. Many of her books are illustrated with photographs by her husband, Christopher Knight. She has received many awards for her titles including Sugaring Time which was a Newberry Honor Book; The Night Journey which won the National Jewish Book Award for Children; Pageant which was an ALA Notable Children's book; and Beyond the Burning Time which was an ALA Best Book for Young Adults. She has also received the Washington Post's Children's Book Guild Award for her contribution to children's nonfiction. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 4-6-Arriving in Boston in 1760 via slave ship when she was just 7 years old, Wheatley became a learned young woman who was writing poetry by the age of 12. "At seventeen Phillis became famous" when her poem honoring the Reverend George Whitefield was read in the Colonies and in England. Lasky's episodic account breaks the picture-book text into chapters that are sometimes fictionalized or speculative and other times explanatory as they sketch the poet's growing accomplishments, her brief trip to England, and the pre-Revolutionary War events unfolding around her. Narrated in simple staccato sentences, the opening slave ship scene emphasizes the starkness of this experience. Later explanations of historical events become more complex. Lasky draws numerous parallels between the poet's love of freedom and the patriots' cause and concludes with her hard at work writing into the night to describe her African roots to a British soldier. The author's focus is on the poet's intellectual accomplishments and the publication of her book-"the first ever written by a black American woman." Wheatley's adult life and early death are skimmed in an epilogue. Lee's handsome acrylic paintings, including a commanding cover portrait, convey a fine sense of the period. However, in the depictions of Wheatley, the young woman never changes much over the years. Except for a small number of manuscript reproductions, sources are not acknowledged. A bit vague and disconnected at times, this book fills a gap as few accounts of the legendary Wheatley are currently available for children.-Margaret Bush, Simmons College, Boston (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
PW called this picture-book biography of the first published African-American woman poet a "lyrical portrait. The large-scale, realistic acrylics emphasize Wheatley's strength and constancy amidst the turbulent tenor of her times." Ages 8-12. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
Phillis Wheatley's experience of being sold into slavery and her growth as a poet are, along with some fictionalized elements, set against the events of the American Revolution. Although Lasky milks the story for sentiment and handles some of the racial issues clumsily, she does convey the extraordinary quality of Wheatley's achievements. Workmanlike acrylics illustrate scenes from Wheatley's life. From HORN BOOK Fall 2003, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
A sizable dose of imagination seeks to illuminate the life of Phillis Wheatley, the 18th-century slave poet, but reveals more about the author than the subject. Lasky (Porkenstein, 2002, etc.) opens the story in the hold of the slaver Phillis and then follows Wheatley's life and career as she is purchased by the Wheatleys of Boston, learns to speak, read, and write English, and begins to write and then publish her own poems. Throughout, the author imputes thoughts and feelings-"Boston was the strangest sight Phillis had ever seen"-without substantiation and even introduces dialogue which, without documentation, can only be assumed to be invented-" 'What will you call her?' John Wheatley asked his wife." Perhaps most poignantly, Phillis is presented as treasuring a memory of her mother making an offering to the morning sun; however, even in the poem to which Lasky refers for this image, it does not appear in Wheatley's own writing. Poignant indeed, but the only person the reader can be certain of treasuring this vision is Lasky herself. Lee's (Hank Aaron: Brave in Every Way, 2001, etc.) acrylics glow with color, as if themselves lit by candlelight, effectively enhancing the sentimental mood of the narrative. The representations of Wheatley are clearly based on the only known portrait of the poet, the frontispiece of her volume of published poetry; a certain lack of expression in the illustrations, however, gives her an air of inscrutability. There is not a whiff of a bibliography, not even to refer readers to Wheatley's poetry, which is widely available in print and electronic formats. An author's note describes in lofty terms her motivations behind bringing Wheatley's story to a picture-book audience: "To be voiceless is to be dehumanized. . . . Phillis's first liberation came when she learned to read and write and discovered her own voice as a poet." It is a pity that Lasky chooses to impose her own feelings and voice upon this woman whose voice she purports to celebrate. (Picture book/biography. 6-10)
Booklist Review
Gr. 2^-4, younger for reading aloud. Named for the slave ship Phillis that brought her to Boston in 1761, Wheatley became America's first black female poet. In this picture-book biography, Lasky follows Wheatley's story, from the horrors of the slave ship and the auction to the slave-owning Wheatley home, where Phillis' owners educated her as an experiment to see "if it might be possible to teach an African to read and write." Phillis mastered several languages and began to write original verse when she was a preteen, eventually publishing a volume of poems and gaining wide acclaim. In evocative language that's rich with historical detail, Lasky gives children a broader view of Wheatley's story by anchoring it within the events of the Revolutionary War. She includes an epilogue that briefly describes Wheatley's tragic adult years, but there is, unfortunately, no mention of sources or bibliography. Nonetheless, this will serve as a good introduction to Wheatley's life and times for young children, who will appreciate Lee's full-page, historically accurate acrylics. Lasky shows not only the facts of Wheatley's life but also the pain of being an accomplished black woman in a segregated world. --Gillian Engberg
