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| 📕10-word summary: Short, biographical introduction to an African American seamstress and poet. 🖌6-word review: Lyrical prose. Beautifully illustrated picture book. |
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| 💭Favorite quote: “What thoughts do you carry when idle with nothing to do? Do you dream of the future? Or of someone who lived before you?” | |||||||||
| Description:* What dreams do you carry? Myra Viola Wilds dreamed of opportunity. She left her home in rural Kentucky for the city, learned to read and to write, and became a dressmaker. She hand-stitched gorgeous gowns. She worked so hard she lost her eyesight, and her world went dark. But those well-loved stitches turned into words, and one night Myra woke in the middle of the night and wrote a poem she called “Sunshine.” She kept writing. She wrote the lush green, sweet-corn yellow, cerulean blue, sunshine-y world from memory, collecting her poems into a book called Thoughts of Idle Hours, published in 1915.*From goodreads.com’s synopsis. | |||||||||
| Thoughts: This was one of 3 books that I saw in an article reviewing 3 recommended children’s picture books about African-American people: 1) And She Was Loved: Toni Morrison’s Life in Stories, 2) Go Tell It: How James Baldwin Became a Writer, and 3) Dream a Dress, Dream a Poem: Dressmaker and Poet, Myra Viola Wilds. I hadn’t heard of Myra Viola Wilds before reading this book, and I’m glad to know about her now. The story seemed a little disjointed to me, hence the 4-star, as opposed to 5-star, rating. The art work is great. | |||||||||
See the rest of the books I’ve read in 2025 and previous years: 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019.