New Releases by Marilyn Nelson

In 1955, people all over the United States knew that Emmett Louis Till was a fourteen-year-old African American boy lynched for supposedly whistling at a white woman in Mississippi. The brutality of his murder, the open-casket funeral, and the acquittal of the men tried for the crime drew wide media attention. Award-winning poet Marilyn Nelson reminds us of the boy whose fate helped spark the civil rights movement. This martyr’s wreath, woven from a little-known but sophisticated form of poetry, challenges us to speak out against modern-day injustices, to “speak what we see.”

Born the prince of Dukandarra, Guinea, Broteer Furro was captured by slave traders at age six. As Broteer stepped off the African continent and onto a cargo ship bound for Rhode Island, the vessel's steward purchased the boy and gave him a new name: Venture. The young man crossed the Atlantic Ocean, landed in Narragansett, and worked through three decades of slavery to buy not only his own freedom but also the freedom of his wife and children. Remarkable in his own time for his Ambition and physical stature, Venture Smith would become known to history as the first man to document both his capture from Africa and life as an American slave. Poems by Marilyn Nelson sit opposite the text of Venture Smith's own narrative.

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.