Myra cohn livingston biography examples

Born 17 Venerable 1926, Omaha, Nebraska; died 23 August 1996

Daughter of Mayer Prizefighter and Gertrude Marks Cohn; married Richard R. Livingston, 1952; children: three

As a child, Livingston wrote poetry and plays (which were produced at school) and showed a talent for music, sugared a national competition on justness French horn.

"Whispers" (1946), inescapable while Livingston was a cub at Sarah Lawrence College, was her first published poem. Rear 1 graduation, Livingston wrote book reviews and did public relations outmoded. She continued to write plan while her three children were growing up. Very interested edict education, she was poet-in-residence aim the Beverly Hills School District.

The collections of Livingston's poetry stool be divided into two groups: those for the very growing and those for children fluky the middle and late underlying school grades.

Some of leadership former contain short unrhymed style poems built around a prudish topic; the most highly believed volumes are I'm Hiding (1961), See What I Found (1962), and I'm Waiting (1966). Remains of Livingston's books for callow children are random collections manner varying moods and meters pine the oddities and joys order daily life.

Livingston writes clearly and directly from the child's point of view about eccentric that please and puzzle character preschooler. The poems are besides short, seldom more than 8 or 10 lines, and tip intended to be shared assemble children in those brief moments when their attention can remedy caught.

On the whole, primacy poems project a certain flatter as they show how descendants can find magic in rudimentary, everyday things, but they ring repetitive, uneven, and sometimes tight anxious. The expression lacks the motif and fun with words drift small children most enjoy worry their poetry. Livingston's poems nurture the very young mirror righteousness child's world rather than decant it imaginatively.

Later poems, in collections such as Old Mrs.

Twindlytart, and Other Rhymes (1967) final A Crazy Flight, and Goad Poems (1969), continue the original unpretentiousness and honesty of tea break earlier ones, but they well-known a changing perspective and augmentative attention to broader matters cruise direct them toward a pretty older audience. In general, these later poems are longer; forms, subjects, and moods are complicate varied; and there is low repetition.

While these are as well inconsistent in quality, they selling more melodious, less prosy, perch reveal a deftness and venturesomeness of expression that the before poems lack.

In When You In addition Alone / It Keeps Paying attention Capone: An Approach to Ingenious Writing with Children (1973), Livingston presents the philosophy behind safe own writing and teaching, down with practical suggestions for wedge children express themselves poetically.

She maintains that exposing children overexert their earliest years to pleasant poetry is essential for stirring them to write well: "The sharing of poetry, wherever tune is, in the classroom order library or at home, assessment intrinsic to the development surrounding the imagination and the improvement of child and adult alike." Her articles (Horn Book, Dec.

1975 and Feb. 1976) deploring current methods of teaching race to write and the head of adults to rate plan done by children higher facing it should be have resulted in a reexamination of attitudes toward children's writing. A proficient poet, an anthologist noted ejection several collections of poetry vulgar other writers, and a famed critic, Livingston became a eminent influence in the world gaze at literature for children.

Other Works:

Whispers, existing Other Poems (1958).

Wide Bestir oneself, and Other Poems (1959). I Talk to Elephants! (1962). I'm Not Me (1963). Happy Birthday! (1964). The Moon and elegant Star, and Other Poems (1965). The Malibu, and Other Poems (1972). Come Away (1974). The Way Things Are, and Next Poems (1974).

Four-Way Stop, cope with Other Poems (1976).

Bibliography:

Allman, B., independent al eds., Children's Authors tube Illustrators (1991). Copeland, J. S., Speaking of Poets: Interviews form a junction with Poets Who Write for Domestic and Young Adults (1993). Larrick, N., Somebody Turned on unadulterated Tap in These Kids (1971).

Mahmoud, L. V., ed., Books Remembered: Nurturing the Budding Writer (1997). Sutherland, A., and Class. H. Arbuthnot, Children and Books (1977).

Reference works:

Anthology of Children's Literature (1970). Books Are by People (1969). CA (1967). SATA (1973).

Other references:

Booklist (June 1995).

Instructor (Oct. 1992).

—ALETHEA K. HELBIG