Dream a Dress, Dream a Poem : Dressmaker and Poet, Myra Viola Wilds (A Picture Book) - Nancy Johnson James

Dream a Dress, Dream a Poem

Dressmaker and Poet, Myra Viola Wilds (A Picture Book)

By: Nancy Johnson James, Diana Ejaita (Illustrator)

Hardcover | 23 January 2025

At a Glance

Hardcover


RRP $29.99

$27.90

or 4 interest-free payments of $6.97 with

Aims to ship in 5 to 10 business days

When will this arrive by?
Enter delivery postcode to estimate

A poetic picture book biography about blind Black poet Myra Viola Wilds, written by the author of Brown: The Many Shades of Love

What dreams do you carry? Myra Viola Wilds dreamed of opportunity. She left her home in rural Kentucky for the city, learned to read and to write, and became a dressmaker. She hand-stitched gorgeous gowns. She worked so hard she lost her eyesight, and her world went dark. But those well-loved stitches turned into words, and one night Myra woke in the middle of the night and wrote a poem she called “Sunshine.” She kept writing. She wrote the lush green, sweet-corn yellow, cerulean blue, sunshine-y world from memory, collecting her poems into a book called Thoughts of Idle Hours, published in 1915.

Written in Wilds’s style, this lyrical, gorgeously illustrated picture book biography celebrates this little-known poet and includes a biography that provides context to her life—the Great Migration, Jim Crow segregation—as well a photograph and a small selection of her poems.

More in Children's Non-Fiction

Bluey: Where's Bluey? At Easter : A Search-and-Find Book - Bluey
Spot's First Little Library - Eric Hill

RRP $12.99

$8.95

31%
OFF
Taronga : What Do Baby Animals Do? - Taronga Conservation Society Australia
The Sigh of Haruhi Suzumiya : Light novel - Nagaru Tanigawa
Monkey Puzzle : 25th Anniversary Edition - Julia Donaldson

RRP $14.99

$10.95

27%
OFF
The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya : Light Novel - Nagaru Tanigawa
All About Race Cars : Red Racer - Andy Amendola

RRP $22.99

$19.75

14%
OFF
A Brush with Magic - Flora Ahn

RRP $29.99

$27.90

Rain on the Rock - Jodi Toering

RRP $28.00

$23.80

15%
OFF
Lonely Planet Kids Atlas of Dogs : Lonely Planet Kids - Lonely Planet Kids