Books with author Maria Nelson

George Washington Carver was born a slave in Missouri about 1864 and was raised by the childless white couple who had owned his mother. In 1877 he left home in search of an education, eventually earning a master's degree. In 1896, Booker T. Washington invited Carver to start the agricultural department at the all-black-staffed Tuskegee Institute, where he spent the rest of his life seeking solutions to the poverty among landless black farmers by developing new uses for soil-replenishing crops such as peanuts, cowpeas, and sweet potatoes. Carver's achievements as a botanist and inventor were balanced by his gifts as a painter, musician, and teacher. This Newbery Honor Book and Coretta Scott King Author Honor Book by Marilyn Nelson provides a compelling and revealing portrait of Carver's complex, richly interior, profoundly devout life.

A powerful and thought-provoking Civil Rights era memoir from one of America’s most celebrated poets. Looking back on her childhood in the 1950s, Newbery Honor winner and National Book Award finalist Marilyn Nelson tells the story of her development as an artist and young woman through fifty eye-opening poems. Readers are given an intimate portrait of her growing self-awareness and artistic inspiration along with a larger view of the world around her: racial tensions, the Cold War era, and the first stirrings of the feminist movement. A first-person account of African-American history, this is a book to study, discuss, and treasure.

Life can be disappointing. Broken dreams, hurtful experiences, and even our own failures can bring us to a place of plodding along, burdened under the weight of heartbreak or others’ expectations. Faced with such challenges, some of us work harder, hoping that things will eventually get better. Others become angry and bitter. Cinderella knew this all too well. Thrown into sudden personal loss and cruel demands, she tried her best to keep her spirits up and please her stepmother and stepsisters. Sadly, her efforts failed. Cinderella’s salvation, however, lay not in her own efforts but in someone else—someone who would accept her for who she was, rescue her from disillusionment, and take her to his home where they could live happily ever after. God never meant for us to live in discouragement. Using the story of Cinderella, Rescuing Cinderella shows us how Jesus, God’s Son, came to give us the happily ever after God has for each one of us. We can let our difficulties bring us down or make us bitter and cruel, or we can let God give us His life and renew in us hope and expectation. When we exchange our struggles for God’s abundant life, we will become the delightful, wonderful, captivating women we were meant to be.

This riveting novel in verse, perfect for fans of Jacqueline Woodson and Toni Morrison, explores American history and race through the eyes of a teenage boy embracing his newfound identity Connor’s grandmother leaves his dad a letter when she dies, and the letter’s confession shakes their tight-knit Italian-American family: The man who raised Dad is not his birth father. But the only clues to this birth father’s identity are a class ring and a pair of pilot’s wings. And so Connor takes it upon himself to investigate—a pursuit that becomes even more pressing when Dad is hospitalized after a stroke. What Connor discovers will lead him and his father to a new, richer understanding of race, identity, and each other.

Conjuring numerous voices and characters across oceans and centuries, Faster Than Light explores widely disparate experiences through the lens of traditional poetic forms. This volume contains a selection of Marilyn Nelson's new and uncollected poems as well as work from each of her lyric histories of eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and twentieth-century African American individuals and communities.Poems include the stories of historical figures like Emmett Till, the fourteen-year-old boy lynched in 1955, and the inhabitants of Seneca Village, an African American community razed in 1857 for the creation of Central Park. "Bivouac in a Storm" tells the story of a group of young soldiers, later known as the Tuskegee Airmen, as they trained near Biloxi, Mississippi, "marching in summer heat / thick as blackstrap molasses, under trees / haunted by whippings." Later pieces range from the poet's travels in Africa, Europe, and Polynesia, to poems written in collaboration with Father Jacques de Foiard Brown, a former Benedictine monk and the subject of Nelson's playful fictional fantasy sequence, "Adventure-Monk!" Both personal and historical, these poems remain grounded in everyday details but reach toward spiritual and moral truths.

It might seem impossible to drive from Alaska to Argentina, but with a passport handy, thats a road trip people can take. The Pan-American Highway is a system of connected roads and highways that travel roughly north to south through North and South America. Readers learn about the many environments travelers would drive through on such a journey as well as the history of the highway. Full-color photographs illustrate the many cool destinations along the way as fun fact boxes suggest places to see along the route.

Red Cloud did something no other Native American leader was able to: He successfully led his people against the United States in order to keep their historical lands. While the Sioux were forced off their lands less than a decade after he signed a peace treaty with the United States, Red Cloud still stood up for his people with great bravery. Readers are introduced to Red Cloud and his great leadership and historical images complement both the biographical information and the historical context surrounding Red Clouds life. A new perspective on westward expansion allows readers to see an often overlooked cultural viewpoint.

Quiet for more than 135 years, the voices of Seneca Village are rising again. Angela Riddles ponders being free-but-not-free. The orphaned Donnelly brothers get gold fever. A conjurer sees past his era and into ours. Drawing upon history and her exquisite imagination, Newbery Honor medalist, two-time Coretta Scott King Honor medalist, and National Book Award nomineee Marilyn Nelson recreates the long lost community of Seneca Village. A multi-racial, multi-ethnic neighborhood in the center of Manhattan, it thrived in the middle years of the 19th century. Families prayed in its churches, children learned in its school, babies were born, and loved ones were laid to rest. Then work crews arrived to build Central Park, and Seneca Village disappeared. Illustrated in the poet's own words -- with brief prose descriptions of what she sees inside her poems -- this collection takes readers back in time and deep into the mind's eye of one of America's most gifted writers. Included as well is a foreword that outlines the history of Seneca Village and a guide to the variety of poetic forms she employs throughout this exceptional book. Marilyn Nelson is the author of numerous books including Carver: a life in poems, A Wreath for Emmet Till, and How I Discovered Poetry. Her honors include there National Book Award Finalist medals, the Frost Medal, The Poet’s Prize, and the Boston Globe/Hornbook Award. Nelson is an emerita professor at the University of Connecticut, the former poet Laureate of Connecticut, and founder and director of Soul Mountain Retreat.

There is a skeleton in the Mattatuck Museum in Connecticut. It has been in the town for over 200 years. In 1996, community members decided to find out what they could about it. Historians discovered that the bones were those of a slave name Fortune, who was owned by a local doctor. After Fortune's death, the doctor rendered the bones. Further research revealed that Fortune had married, had fathered four children, and had been baptized later in life. His bones suggest that after a life of arduous labor, he died in 1798 at about the age of 60. Merilyn Nelson wrote The Manumission Requiem to commemorate Fortune's life. Detailed notes and archival photographs enhance the reader's appreciation of the poem.

The visual effects weather has on the form of our planet are as subtle as a roads potholes following a tough winter and an overflowing stream during a spring storm. Readers are introduced to the basic concepts of weathering and erosion in an accessible, fun way that supports the science curriculum. Descriptive fact boxes build on essential science content throughout the book, aided by colorful photographs and real-life examples.