A River of Words by Jen Bryant, Illustrated by Melissa Sweet

A River of Words by Jen Bryant, Illustrated by Melissa Sweet

Summary: William Carlos Williams was just like everybody else, except he liked to walk through the woods and observe everything. He never missed a thing. He liked to rest by the Passaic River, and just listen to the water rushing by. As he got older, he had less and less time to go outside and walk through the woods and listen to the river. However, one day his teacher began talking about poetry. As William began to write his own, he felt like he was back in the woods, laying next to the river. William liked to write about his the things he saw, and because the things he saw didn’t fit with each other like what he read in other poems, William decided to try something different. William continued writing, and when time came to go to college, William decided to study medicine like his Uncle Carlos. While William was away studying medicine he met his friends, Ezra Pound and Hilda Doolittle who both studied literature, and Charles Demuth who studied painting. When he was all done with school he went back to his hometown to opened “William C. Williams, M.D.- Family Medicine”. William was busy again, helping families and delivering babies. But at night when the town went to sleep, William would write.

Review: This book on William C. Williams would be amazing to have in a lesson about poetry and famous poets. For 7 and 10 years olds, it’s important they are engaged in what they are reading, and have content that they relate to. This book allows its reader to walk through the busy life of William C. William and why he wrote the poems he did. I would without a doubt put this in my classroom.