The TeachingBooks Blog

Nikki Grimes on Writing From the Inside Out and Back Again

in Guest Author Blog Posts

Nikki Grimes is an author of fiction and poetry who has received five Coretta Scott King Book Award recognitions. In this column she discusses her writing process. Whether it’s her focus on character development, the story behind Bronx Masquerade (Penguin, 2001), or her personal experiences that influence her research and writing, Grimes’s insights reveal the dialectical nature of writing.

Poetry Friday: Margarita Engle

in Poetry Friday

In this audio clip, author Margarita Engle shares the backstory for her 2009 Newbery Honor book and 2009 Pura Belpré-winning book, The Surrender Tree: Poem’s of Cuba’s Struggle for Freedom (Henry Holt, 2008). Learn about the life of the character,…

Poetry Friday: Jon Scieszka

in Poetry Friday

In this audio clip, Jon Scieszka playfully reads selected poems from his book Science Verse (Penguin, 2004). I enjoy his chuckles after each poem, and I love how he incorporates both humor and poetry into the curricular area of science.…

Poetry Friday: Nikki Grimes

in Poetry Friday

Nikki Grimes’ book Talkin’ About Bessie: The Story of Aviator Elizabeth Coleman (Orchard, 2002) is the biography, written in 20 voices, of the first African American licensed female pilot. Listen to Nikki Grimes share more about Elizabeth Coleman and read…

Poetry Friday: Marilyn Nelson, Part II

in Poetry Friday

Poetry pays homage to the dead, sheds light on crimes and injustice, and helps us to explore intense emotions. In Fortune’s Bones: The Manumission Requiem (Front Street, 2004), Marilyn Nelson created a requiem to honor “Fortune,” an 18th-century slave who…

Pin It on Pinterest