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Seeing into Tomorrow: Haiku by Richard Wright

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Seeing into Tomorrow: Haiku by Richard Wright

Hardcover

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Hardcover
$19.99

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Overview

A remarkable celebration of Richard Wright, poetry, and contemporary black boys at play.
From walking a dog to watching a sunset to finding a beetle, Richard Wright's haiku puts everyday moments into focus. Now, more than fifty years after they were written, these poems continue to reflect our everyday experiences. Paired with the photo-collage artwork of Nina Crews, Seeing into Tomorrow celebrates the lives of contemporary African American boys and offers an accessible introduction to one of the most important African American writers of the twentieth century.

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About the Author

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781512418651
Publisher:	Lerner Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/01/2018
Pages:	32
Product dimensions:	9.00(w) x 10.90(h) x 0.40(d)
Age Range:	8 - 9 Years

About the Author

Author and illustrator, Nina Crews uses collage to create distinctive picture books. Her first book, One Hot Summer Day, was published in 1995 and is still in print today. Her titles include A Girl Like Me, Seeing Into Tomorrow: Haiku by Richard Wright, The Neighborhood Mother Goose, and Below. Her work has been selected by ALA's Notable committee, the Junior Library Guild, NCTE, New York Public Library, Chicago Public Library, Bank Street College of Education, and others. She is the daughter of children's book authors and illustrators Donald Crews and Ann Jonas. Nina lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband and son.

Author and illustrator, Nina Crews uses collage to create distinctive picture books. Her first book, One Hot Summer Day, was published in 1995 and is still in print today. Her titles include A Girl Like Me, Seeing Into Tomorrow: Haiku by Richard Wright, The Neighborhood Mother Goose, and Below. Her work has been selected by ALA's Notable committee, the Junior Library Guild, NCTE, New York Public Library, Chicago Public Library, Bank Street College of Education, and others. She is the daughter of children's book authors and illustrators Donald Crews and Ann Jonas. Nina lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband and son.

Date of Birth:

September 4, 1908

Date of Death:

November 28, 1960

Place of Birth:

Near Natchez, Mississippi

Place of Death:

Paris, France

Education:

Smith-Robertson Junior High in Jackson, Mississippi (1925)

From the B&N Reads Blog

Page 1 of

Editorial Reviews

11/06/2017
Crews pairs sweeping photocollages with a dozen haiku written by Native Son author Wright during the final year of his life (he wrote some 4,000 haiku in total, 800 of which were later published, explains Crews in biographical notes). Candid images show African-American boys in fields and forests, docks and porches, in scenes that echo Wright’s musings. “As my delegate,/ My shadow imitates me/ This first day of spring,” he writes as a boy chases his shadow across snow-spattered grass. Elsewhere, a boy and an elderly man observe a patchwork freight train: “Empty railroad tracks:/ A train sounds in the spring hills/ And the rails leap with life.” The clustered, overlapping photographs scatter and dissipate at the edges of the spreads, subtly reflecting the evanescence of the moments Wright describes. Ages 5–10. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

"A must for all children's collections. These verses are an introduction to haiku as well as an entry point into Wright's work; they can be read aloud to younger children or enjoyed independently by older readers."—starred, School Library Journal

From the Publisher

★ 01/01/2018
K-Gr 3—This book collects 12 of Wright's outstanding haiku, written 50 years ago and still available in the anthology, Haiku: The Last Poems of an American Icon. The poems offer a view of the world through the lens of his experience, but the appreciation of nature and the emotions felt in such moments have a universal appeal. Crews uses photo collage to illustrate each scene. She explains, "I photographed African American boys for this book, because I wanted the reader to imagine the world through a young brown boy's eyes." Crews shows familiar scenes of boys playing on a shady porch, walking a dog, or writing in snow with a mittened finger. Her chosen medium emphasizes how haiku creates snapshots of single instances or feelings. The final poem ends with the phrase "seeing into tomorrow," which inspired the book's title. On the page, readers will see a young boy gazing up into a brilliant blue sky as if he can glimpse the future. An archival photo of Wright reading to his young daughter accompanies the introduction, and a brief biography of Wright along with a list for further reading is included in the back matter. VERDICT A must for all children's collections. These verses are an introduction to haiku as well as an entry point into Wright's work; they can be read aloud to younger children or enjoyed independently by older readers.—Suzanne Costner, Fairview Elementary School, Maryville, TN

School Library Journal

★ 2017-11-27
Award-winning illustrator Crews breathes new life into the poetry of the late Wright, who found solace and wonder in the traditional Japanese haiku form before he died. Wright is world-renowned as a master of language and chronicler of the African-American experience whose works remain discussed and relevant today. As his health began to fail him in 1959, Wright took to haiku as a way to try something new and to teach his teenage daughter about the natural wonders he remembered growing up among in the American South. In her photo-collage illustrations, Crews accents the haiku through the perspective of African-American boys, positioning readers to imagine the everyday sights and sounds of plants and animals, forests and farms through a young brown boy's eyes. Overlapping images fragment the landscapes but never the humans depicted, underscoring the longevity and permanence of the African-American people. Following that formula, the illustration for the titular haiku shows a young black boy with stick in hand and eye to the sky, which is so many blue squares, white space underneath promising a world without limits. The verse offers a warm natural optimism that may show an aging Wright's renewed hope: "A spring sky so clear / That you feel you are seeing / Into tomorrow."This loving, welcoming introduction to one of the most important American writers of the 20th century centers young black boys as supreme observers and interrogators of the natural wonders that surround them. (biographical note, further reading) (Picture book/poetry. 5-10)

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