Spin a Soft Black Song: Poems for Children

by Nikki Giovanni, George Martins (Illustrator)

Overview

Spin a Soft Black Song is an illustrated poetry collection from Caldecott Honor and Langston Hughes Medal award-winning author Nikki Giovanni.

With black-and-white art from George Martins, this revised edition of the classic collection features thirty-five poems for and about black children—written from their perspective—celebrating the energy and joy of young life within their own communities.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780374464691
Publisher:	Square Fish
Publication date:	04/01/1987
Edition description:	Revised
Pages:	64
Product dimensions:	5.15(w) x 7.60(h) x 0.20(d)
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Nikki Giovanni wrote many books of poetry for children and adults, including Rosa, a Caldecott Honor book, Lincoln and Douglass, The Genie in the Jar, and Ego-tripping and Other Poems for Young People. Giovanni called herself, "a Black American, a daughter, a mother, a professor of English." She was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, and grew up in Lincoln Heights, an all-black suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio. She studied at Fisk University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Columbia University. She published her first book of poetry, Black Feeling Black Talk, in 1968, and since then became one of America’s most widely read poets. Oprah Winfrey named her as one of her twenty-five “Living Legends.” Her autobiography Gemini was a finalist for the National Book Award, and several of her books received NAACP Image Awards. She received twenty-five honorary degrees, and numerous other distinctions, including being named Woman of the Year by Mademoiselle Magazine, The Ladies Home Journal and Ebony, the first recipient of the Rosa L. Parks Woman of Courage Award, and the Langston Hughes Medal for poetry. Nikki Giovanni lived in Christiansburg, Virginia, where she was a professor of English at Virginia Polytechnic Institute. She died in 2024 at the age of 81.

Editorial Reviews

Martins' black-and-white drawings exude action and feeling, and the elements he chose to illustrate are perceptive and sensitive...A fine addition to the poetry shelves.” —Booklist

From the Publisher