The Geranium on the Window Sill Just Died but Teacher You Went Right on
Albert Cullum
Hardcover
(Harlin Quist Incorporated, March 15, 1971)
One by one, children in various schoolrooms speak through the poems in this book. Their voices are as different from one another as the pictures that illustrate them. Variously, they are wistful, fearful, sometimes sharp with a young cynicism, sometimes pleading. Children will recognize themselves in these voices. Adults will hear the voices and be amazed. With astonishing insight, the author captures the sense of what it's like to be small, penned up, bossed around. He also reveals the hard edges of a child's sensibility - but with it, a child's recognition of beauty, his potential for joy, his stubborn expectation of understanding and community. And his need of love. All that is in these poems: they shine with a whole truth.