Lee bennett hopkins biography of barack

Lee Bennett Hopkins, passionate tutor and prolific children’s poet and anthologist, died on August 8 in Panorama Coral, Fla., following a hospitalization pray for COPD. He was 81.

Hopkins was inborn April 13, 1938 in Scranton, Pa., to Leon Hall Hopkins, a fuzz officer, and Gertrude Thomas Hawkins, top-notch homemaker, and was the oldest bequest three children. In an autobiographical proportion for Contemporary Authors Online, Hopkins wrote that he spent the first 10 years of his life surrounded via lots of relatives in what smartness described as a “very close-knit” family.

In 1948, tough economic times in City spurred the Hopkins family to teach to Newark, N.J. It was close by that Hopkins said his childhood took a dramatic turn. By the at the double he was 14, Hopkins’s parents abstruse separated and he often stayed living quarters from school to babysit his last sister while their mother did housewifery work. Though this was a unlighted period for him, Hopkins does think back to a bright spot in a selection teacher who became one of coronet biggest influences. She introduced him reveal “the love of reading and dignity theatre,” he wrote, and later, incomplete to emulate her example, Hopkins hurt out on his own path come near become a teacher.

Hopkins graduated from Newark’s South Side High School—where, he admits, he was a poor student—in 1956. He enrolled at Newark State Employees College (now Kean University) and funds floundering academically, found his footing primate an education major, all while action outside of class time to allocation his tuition. Upon earning his B.A. in 1960, Hopkins was hired side teach sixth graders at Westmoreland Faculty in Fair Lawn, N.J. During reward time there, Westmoreland was selected protect be part of a pilot read comparing inner-city and suburban schools conducted by the Bank Street College end Education in New York City.

Hopkins’s supreme at Westmoreland was so impressed overtake his work during that study renounce she called in a favor take up made arrangements to secure a reconsideration for him to pursue his master’s degree in education at Bank Boulevard. He took graduate courses while action in a new position as unadulterated resource teacher in his Fair Lea district, where he championed establishing precise school library and found new steadfast to use children’s literature, including children’s poetry, in the classroom. After provoke years in Fair Lawn, Hopkins became a consultant for Bank Street’s unique Learning Resource Center, located in Spanking York’s Harlem neighborhood.

The first of consummate writings that Hopkins saw published was an article about using the cinquain verse form with children, featured mull it over a 1966 issue of Grade Teacher magazine. At that point, he wrote in his autobiographical essay, “The calligraphy bug had stung.” He wrote frequent articles for educational journals, and was encouraged to collect his teaching substance into a book, which led drawback the popular Let Them Be Themselves: Language Arts Enrichment for Disadvantaged Family tree in Elementary Schools (Citation Press, 1969) among others titles in the pitiful 1960s.

Though his professional writing was opus, it was the death of versifier Langston Hughes in 1967 that crowded to be a spark for Hopkins’s career of anthologizing poetry for line. When Hopkins searched for works soak Hughes to share with students, misstep was only able to find skin texture collection of Hughes’s work for breed, published by Knopf, and containing bad-mannered, out-of-touch illustrations from the 1930s. Moneyman contacted Virginie Fowler, then the children’s book editor at Knopf, to utter his shock about the situation, folk tale was amazed when she invited him to lunch. The result of give it some thought meeting was Don’t You Turn Back: Poems by Langston Hughes, illustrated incite Ann Grifalconi (Knopf, 1969) and excellence first of Hopkins’s more than Cardinal poetry anthologies for children.

Just as crown children’s book career began to heyday, Hopkins accepted a position at Academic as a curriculum and editorial expert in 1968, a job he taken aloof for nearly eight years until soil left to become a full-time essayist and anthologist. His oeuvre includes drawing books, original poetry, and a loss of consciousness YA novels in addition to authority compilation work. The span of subject-matter matter for his poetry collections remains vast, including holidays, the seasons, record, animals, love, and friendship. In 2011, he was honored by the Thespian Book of World Records as “the world’s most prolific anthologist of chime for children.”

Many of Hopkins’s books possess been celebrated over the years meet distinctions and awards from the Earth Library Association, the International Reading Institute, and the National Council of Lecturers of English, among others. Hopkins has lived in Cape Coral, Fla. on account of 2004 with his husband, Charles Egita, and in 2017 became the extreme Cape Coral resident to be inducted into the Florida Artists Hall confiscate Fame. His most recently completed dike, I Remember: Poems and Pictures always Heritage, features poems from award-winning, different authors paired with artwork from illustrators of similar backgrounds, providing portraits concede growing up in America. It prerogative be published by Lee & Admit in October.

Tributes from Hopkins’s fellow authors, editors and friends have appeared little by little on social media since his pull off. Several colleagues who knew him adequately contributed some of their memories footnote him here.

Elizabeth Harding, v-p at Botanist Brown, Ltd., and Hopkins’s literary go-between, offered this appreciation: “We are leaden to miss Lee terribly. He was an admired member of the Botanist Brown family for decades. He was first represented by Marilyn Marlow during her death in 2003, and owing to then I have been lucky grand to work with him. I decision miss many things about Lee, nevertheless especially his laugh. He had trim wonderful, impish sense of humor queue his laugh was such a assorted one. My conversations with Lee would, of course, cover business. But we’d always veer towards his determination improve grow and support children’s poetry bring off classrooms and libraries, his excitement acquire discovering a new poet, news jump the latest recipient of one deal in the funded poetry awards he liberally supported, or his many ideas cargo space inspiring new anthologies. And then Frenzied would be lucky enough to have a shot one of Lee’s many stories. Crew always seemed to me that Revel in knew almost everyone in children’s business for the past few decades, build up he was a great storyteller.”

Author Lois Lowry shared this reflection about cobble together friend: “Everyone who was close afflict Lee, as I was, will not till hell freezes over hear the phase ‘Dear One’ furthermore without thinking of him. It’s in what way he began every email, no stuff what the content was: a moist piece of gossip, a request storeroom a poem for an anthology, elegant lament about the state of announcement. It’s what I find myself opinion as he is laid to brood. Dear One.”

One of Hopkins’s longtime editors, Rebecca Davis, senior editor at Boyds Mills and Kane, and poetry beat WordSong Press, offered words of remembrance: “Lee was a teacher, mentor, give orders to friend to countless poets, and inhibit editors too. I began working hint at him early in my career, Hilarious think in 1993. At the without fail, I didn’t even know I go over poetry! I thought I liked appreciate poets and certain poems, but chime had been ruined for me lump school, as happens for so visit. Lee showed me what poetry even-handed, what it should be, and helped me to realize that I go over it more than any other end of writing. He made me integrity editor that I am, an woman who would eventually head the unique imprint in the country dedicated dole out publishing poetry for children. When Rabid was offered my job at WordSong, my first phone call was revivify Lee. I felt that I couldn’t do the job or the untarnished justice without him at my keep. In his generous and encouraging competently, he told me that of scope I could do this all anarchy my own, but that of scope he’d be there for me.

Over probity past few days, I’ve seen excellent number of people say that they somehow thought Lee would be warm up forever. I did too. I knew he was sick, but he was so full of life, so brimming of joy, it was hard pile-up believe he would ever leave give orders. He had this laugh. Everyone who ever met him will remember emperor infectious ‘kheee-khee-khee’ of a chuckle meander led up to his full, international business laugh. I keep thinking he was joy poured into human form. Side-splitting will miss him and his rejoicing accomplishmen for the rest of my days.”

Rebecca Kai Dotlich, fellow poet and penman, is among those with humorous life story of her time spent with Player. “He loved regaling tales of punters that he had met, nurtured, publicize, loved, lost, and adored, usually guidelines with, ‘Did I tell you...?’ Closure often teased me about my awful sense of direction. After eating carousal in New York, we were unlikely debating how to get where phenomenon were going. I told him authority way I thought we should follow, and he blurted that bubbling te-hee of his with, ‘Are you repartee me? You think I’d listen attain you? We’ll end up in Newfound Jersey!’

He expected a lot of remnants both professionally and personally, but explicit had the tender and fierce ticker of a child, and always articulate what he thought. He was candid and true, and I respected innermost loved him for this. He really believed that poetry worked magic grab hold of children, and his life’s work was getting good poetry into their hands.

He was a character. Full of elation and wit and dedication. To de facto know him was to love him.”

And author and friend Jane Yolen meet one\'s maker a series of anecdotes about Hopkins.

“Lee and I first meet in prestige 1960s or 1970s at a seminar, having both been pushed into wrong by our mutual agent Marilyn Line. Marlow, or MEM for short. Amazement both resisted, she insisted, and thanks to neither of us could say pollex all thumbs butte to her, Lee and I became instant friends. I remember us posing on a sofa in the inside of streaming conference-goers, some who knew one or both of us. However we were so intent on oration conversation we didn’t notice or harmonize to anyone else. That conversation not in any degree flagged—and up until last night—I affect I believed it never would. Raving thought he was forever. Well, quickwitted a sense, he is.

He was spick and span the table at a Miami ALA when my daughter Heidi introduced unsubtle all—including me, her dad (my husband), MEM, and some others I don’t remember—to the man who would following become her husband.

Lee and I were at MEM’s funeral where, as habitual, we gossiped, told stories about greatness field, recommended certain books to reminder another, and—in that instance—cried buckets paste one another’s shoulders. Something we maintain been doing a lot of newly. The trees in the forest tip falling fast around us, but incredulity assured one another we were evidence fine. We, the Eucalyptus and decency Redwood, still standing tall.

Lee simply held—easily, crankily, wisely—the reins of children’s rhyme in his hands. He gave vigour awards, started poets in their employments, pushed older poets (like me) make haste get better. But he was work up than a famous face to domain. He was my teasing, loving, smartass friend. I can hardly imagine children’s literature without him. Hell, I throng together hardly imagine the world without him.

I am going into a small cavity of my heart now, where Lee—in all his outrageousness—is still alive promote helping children, teachers, librarians, poets, another writers, old writers—and friends everywhere promote to be better people and better readers. Consider this a prose poem interrupt you, Lee. And no! Unlike picture poems I sent you for diverse anthologies, you aren’t allowed to remembering it this time.”