Days to Celebrate: A Full Year of Poetry, People, Holidays, History, Fascinating Facts, and More »

Lee Bennett Hopkins's poetry anthologies include Days to Celebrate, Marvelous Math, which won a Parents' Choice Gold Award and was a Reading Rainbow selection, Spectacular Science, and Got Geography! He has also received a Christopher Award and the University of Southern Mississippi's Medallion for “lasting contributions to children's literature." Lee Bennett Hopkins lives in Cape Coral, Florida.

In Days to Celebrate Lee Bennett Hopkins has collected an astounding array of information to show us that each day of the year gives us a reason to celebrate. For every month he has compiled a calendar of birthdays, holidays, historic events, inventions, world records, thrilling firsts, and more.

And for every month he has selected surprising poems in honor of some of the people and events commemorated in the calendar. There are poems about the seasons and holidays, of course, but there are also poems about a "Flying-Man" (for February 4, Charles Lindbergh's birthday), birds (for April 26, John James Audubon's birthday), windshield wipers (patented November 10), and earmuffs (patented December 21).

Beloved poets, such as Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Christina Rossetti, are joined by new voices in sixty poems that take us on a remarkable journey through a year — and through the years. Stephen Alcorn's illustrations, based on the style of art found in old almanacs, are airy, whimsical, and thought provoking. They perfectly match the breadth and depth of this volume.

Brilliantly conceived and elegantly illustrated, Days to Celebrate is a book that pays tribute to the people, events, and poetry that make up our past and will inspire our future.

Publishers Weekly

Lee Bennett Hopkins gathers poems and milestone facts for every occasion in Days to Celebrate: A Full Year of Poetry, People, Holidays, History, Fascinating Facts, and More, illus. by Stephen Alcorn. From Martin Luther King, Jr.'s brief biography, coupled with Nikki Grimes's poem, "A Question for Martin" in January, to a description of the little-known "Night of the Radishes" on December 23 (the tradition of carving sculptures from radishes in Oaxaca, Mexico), inspirationally paired with Karla Kuskin's "Write about a radish./ Too many people write about the moon...," Hopkins presents an array of versatile verse, both classic and contemporary. Christina Rosetti, Carl Sandburg, Langston Hughes and Hopkins himself number among the other contributors. Alcorn's full-spread and spot illustrations with their fine ink line and watercolor wash, fluidly tie together poems old and new, airy and weighty. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.