Throughout the ages and around the world, humankind has left a mark
on our planet Earth. From Stonehenge to Mount Rushmore, we have
created a gallery of grand endavours that celebrates our beliefs,
our triumphs, and our lives.
We all know what the Golden gate bridge looks like. We can study
its awesome span and impressive list of statistics. But let''s look
again. Can 99 words and 19 lines of acrostic poetry draw us a new
perspective?
Award-winning children''s poet J. Patrick Lewis and the editors
of National Geographic have come together to pay homage to a few of
the great works and workers that have left behind their monumental
mark.
J. Patrick Lewis earned his Ph.D. in Economics at
The Ohio State University (1974) taught at Otterbein College in
Westerville, Ohio until 1998.
He has published 38 children''s picture books to date (6/04), 30
of them poetry or nonsense verse, with Creative Editions, Knopf,
Atheneum, Penguin/Putnam Dial, Harcourt, Candlewick, Little, Brown,
and Dawn Publications.
Lewis''s poems have also appeared in Cricket, Spider,
Ladybug, Cicada, Odyssey, Ranger Rick, Highlights for Children, Ms.
Magazine, Your Big Backyard, Creative Classroom, Storytime,
Storyworks, Chickadee, Ahoy, Journal of Children''s Literature,
Bookbird and over 70 anthologies. He wrote the 1992 National
Children''s Book Week poem, printed on one million bookmarks and
distributed nationally. He also reviews children''s books for
The New York Times.
Lewis has three grown children and two grandchildren. He is now
remarried and lives in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, with his wife Susan and
two stepchildren. Lewis writes full-time, makes over fifty
elementary school visits a year, keynotes at literature
conferences, and presents teachers'' workshops on introducing
poetry in the classroom.
In 1972-73 he and his family spent the academic year in the
former USSR, where Lewis completed his doctoral dissertation as an
International Research and Exchanges (IREX) Fellow. He has three
children: Beth, Matt and Leigh Ann. The Lewises were the first
family to be accepted on this the largest cultural exchange program
between the U.S. and the USSR. Lewis returned to Moscow and other
Soviet cities for shorter stays in 1977, 1982, 1987, August
1991(during the failed coup), 1993, 1995, 1997, 1999, 2001 and
2004.
Lewis has published extensively in the field of Economics. His
articles and reviews have appeared in numerous academic journals,
as well as The Nation, Technology Review, The Progressive,
Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, Cleveland Plain
Dealer and other newspapers and magazines. He has had seven
short stories and over seventy poems published in literary
journals. In 1991 he was awarded an Ohio Arts Council Individual
Artist Grant for his adult poetry.
Through his poetry, Lewis pays homage to 13 monuments around the world, including the Taj Mahal, the Great Wall of China, and Mount Rushmore. Includes a spread in the back of the book with a map showing the locations of the monuments along with brief historical information on each site. Full color.
