Graphia Books
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
January 2009
$7.99 US
48p pb
ISBN: 978-0547076362
fp April 2005
A Wreath For Emmett Till
Marilyn Nelson
illustrated by Philippe Lardy
from the book...
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 held by his mother, Mamie Till Mobley, and the acquittal of the men tried for the crime drew wide media attention.
In a profound and chilling poem, 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'.
If you have read this verse novel and would like to share your opinion of it with other readers please send your review or comments to YARR-A