Children of Long Ago: Poems

by Lessie Jones Little, Jan Spivey Gilchrist (Illustrator), Eloise Greenfield (Introduction)

A collection of seventeen poems that detail the daily pleasures of the African American childhood during the early 1900s.

Genres: Poetry

Hardcover

First published April 1, 2000

Reviews

[Trista Kinkel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This poetry book transforms you back in time and helps you understand what it may have been like to be a child in the early 1900’s. The book is filled with beautiful illustrations that compliment the poems so well. In addition, even though there are many different poems in this book, the characters stay the consistent. The characters include a little girl, her grandma, papa, and mama and it is set in a small town. In addition, the poems are done in verse. The book is also a historical fiction because the poems are set in the past. If you want to be taken back in time, you need this book!

[Priscilla · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book of lyrical poems a delight to read as it talked about the history of the everyday life back in rural America in the 1900s from the perspective of an elderly lady (Lessie Jones Little)growing up there. Lessie Jones Little mixes her memories and imaginations to create poems during the time of her childhood. The book is about happy times, although she had sad difficult times of hunger and her parents being separated. This book provides a clear look into the nature of a past generation. These poems give an appreciation of how life was back then and one of my favourite poems was ‘Papa’s Cutting Wood’. The descriptive writing made me imagine hearing the wood being cut and visualizing the emotional and physical condition of her papa was easy to perceive.
This book would be good for children aged 5-7. It can be used during history for the slavery period and literacy to develop expressive writing. I also think it could be used for art as the illustrations are inspirational and demonstrates good techniques of blending colours.

[Sidney Shiflet · Rating 4 out of 5]

I chose this book because it was a different type of poetry than I was used to reading and I thought that students would enjoy hearing some stories from that time period in a different format. I personally enjoyed how there was a different story on each page and how it went through her memories and her emotions of the time. The illustrations for this book were very well done and I think they are something that students would enjoy. I think that this book could be read in the classroom, for many purposes.

[Kimbria Thomas]

The genre of the book would be considered poetry because it consists of back in day poem. The many poems in the book are about different subjects of the life of African American families. This book has a different narrator on each page. Some are writing about their morning on the way to school, getting their hair done before church, watching their father take care of the yard, etc. I enjoy the poems because they display positive moments of African American families instead of highlighting struggles, broken families, and people.

[Alexa Maring · Rating 5 out of 5]

The introduction to this book make the poems even more powerful and moving. "Life was quite different then." Life when I was younger is very different from the lives children live now. As time changes, ways of life change. It is important to teach our children the differences of time. We are so used to high technology that sometimes we forget or are unsure of what those older than us grew up like. While using these poems in language arts, take the opportunity to involve students' families. Have the students ask their parents or grandparents what life was like when they grew up. Have students write down their responses to their parents answers. I can remember my grandmother telling me stories about when she had to find ways of entertaining herself. There was no television set or computers to play on. I learned a lot about my grandma through those conversations and on those visits to see her, I found myself playing more card games, reading more books, and helping her cook.

[Theresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Children of Long Ago
Little, Lessie Jones

teaches acrostic poetry with detailed explanation to the format and animals with divisions for living areas