  | Full Text Reviews: School Library Journal - 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 - Copyright 2018 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission. Booklist - 02/01/2018 “Just enough of snow / For a boy’s finger to write / His name on the porch.” This first haiku of 12 (selected from more than 4,000 haikus written by author Wright in his lifetime) is overlaid across the image of a child’s gloved hand writing “Richard” in the snow. The rest of the book follows the same pattern, with one haiku per spread alongside a related image of African American boys engaging with nature. Using her distinct, trademark style of realistic photo collage with child models, Crews deliberately photographed only black boys for this book because she “wanted the reader to imagine the world through a young brown boy’s eyes” as a tribute to Wright’s determination that readers recognize and understand the African American experience. Supported by a short Wright biography in the back matter, the result is a strong, simple, relatable, immersive introduction to the traditional haiku and a poet who may not yet be familiar to young readers as well a gentle visual tribute to the young black male experience. - Copyright 2018 Booklist. Loading...
 |