During a visit to her grandma's house, a young girl discovers a box of poems in the attic, poems written by her mother when she was growing up. Her mother's family often moved around the United States and the world because her father was in the Air Force. Over the years, her mother used poetry to record her experiences in the many places the family lived.
Reading the poems and sharing those experiences through her mother's eyes, the young girl feels closer to her mother than ever before. To let her mother know this, she creates a gift: a book with her own poems and copies of her mother's. And when she returns her mother's poems to the box in the attic, she leaves her own poems too, for someone else to find, someday.
Using free verse for the young girl's poems and tanka for her mother's, master poet Nikki Grimes creates a tender intergenerational story that speaks to every child's need to hold onto special memories of home, no matter where that place might be.
NIKKI GRIMES, bestselling author of numerous books for young people, is noted for the poetry that appears in both her picture books and novels. Her work has been honored five times by the Coretta Scott King Award, most recently in 2014. Additional honors for her books include ALA Notables, Bank Street College's Best Children's Books of the Year list, and Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People. Grimes is also a recipient of the NCTE Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children. Poems in the Attic was inspired by the experiences of her friends who grew up moving from place to place with their military families and by her own childhood spent moving from home to home and city to city. Grimes lives in Corona, California.
ELIZABETH ZUNON earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Illustration at the Rhode Island School of Design in 2006, and since then she has been illustrating books, as well as making jewelry and handbags. A native of the Ivory Coast, West Africa, Zunon now lives in Albany, New York.
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