About this item
This simple nonfiction picture book about the beloved American poet William Carlos Williams is also about how being mindful can result in the creation of a great poem like "The Red Wheelbarrow"--which is only sixteen words long.. "Look out the window. What do you see? If you are Dr. William Carlos Williams, you see a wheelbarrow. A drizzle of rain. Chickens scratching in the damp earth." The wheelbarrow belongs to Thaddeus Marshall, a street vendor, who every day goes to work selling vegetables on the streets of Rutherford, New Jersey. That simple action inspires poet and doctor Williams to pick up some of his own tools--a pen and paper--and write his most famous poem.. In this lovely picture book, young listeners will see how paying attention to the simplest everyday things can inspire the greatest art, as they learn about a great American poet.
About the Author
LISA LaBANCA ROGERS is an elementary school librarian and a former newspaper reporter and editor. She grew up in West Long Branch, NJ, not far from where Thaddeus Marshall, the inspiration for William Carlos Williams' poem "The Red Wheelbarrow," tended his garden. 16 WORDS: WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS AND THE RED WHEELBARROW, her first book for children, received starred reviews from Kirkus and Publishers Weekly, was reviewed in The New York Times Book Review, is a Julia Ward Howe Award winner, a Junior Library Guild Selection, and a 2020 Bank Street Best book, among other honors. Her initial manuscript for this book received a 2016 PEN New England Susan P. Bloom Children's Book Discovery Award. Her rhyming picture book, HOUND WON'T GO, published by Albert Whitman & Company on April 1, 2020, was inspired by her sweet, stubborn rescue hound, Tucker. HOUND WON'T GO was selected a Massachusetts Must-Read by the Mass Center for the Book.Lisa holds degrees in English Literature from Boston College and The College of William & Mary, and a masters' in Library and Information Science from Southern Connecticut State University.Lisa lives with her family near the halfway point of the Boston Marathon, which she's run four times. She loves to garden, kayak, paint, and have adventures with her hound. Visit lisarogerswrites.com or follow her on Twitter at @LisaLJRogers.
