Massachusetts Authors

While I was practicing the piano yesterday, Alex grabbed a "Which Way USA?" book off the shelf and started working. Of course, I had to join her. We both really enjoy these books which are filled with puzzles AND they teach you about each state - geography, landmarks, history, etc. We got a BUNCH (25?) of these books from Half Price Books several years ago for $1 each. We finished this one yesterday, but I know we'll work on another one today as Alex is SICK! So, we're just lying around right now... she's watching TV and I'm on the computer blogging and researching our next project.


So back to the book... one of the activities was a word search using the last names of famous Massachusetts authors. I was excited that Alex recognized quite a few of them and I was telling her about others. Then, I decided to "test" us and see who we recognized. In case you want to play along, here's the list:

Louisa May Alcott
Anne Bradstreet
William Cullen Bryant
John Cheever
Emily Dickinson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Benjamin Franklin
William Lloyd Garrison
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Henry James
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Amy Lowell
Herman Melville
Theodore Geisel, aka Dr.Suess
Henry David Thoreau
Phillis Wheatley
John Greenleaf Whittier

Here's Alex's list:
Louisa May Alcott - "Little Women" & "Little Men" (Yeah, Alex!)
Emily Dickinson - poet (Yes!)
Benjamin Franklin - wrote an almanac
Dr. Suess - The Me Book
Phillis Wheatley - she was a slave - wrote poems (I was the most excited that she recognized this lady! She said she learned about her from the Liberty Kids DVDs.)

My list:
Louisa May Alcott -"Little Women", "Little Men"
Anne Bradstreet - not familiar - looked up here - she was a poet in the mid 1600's
William Cullen Bryant - familiar - looked up here - poet & long time editor of New York Evening Post
John Cheever - not familiar - looked up here - novelist, but best known for short stories
Emily Dickinson - poet - wrote "I'm Nobody Who Are You?" - my high school English teacher's favorite poet :-)
Ralph Waldo Emerson - poet - looked up here - I should have remembered him more for his essays & philosophy of Transcendantlism, from the same English teacher
Benjamin Franklin - Poor Richard's Almanac, letters as "Silence Dogood"
William Lloyd Garrison - not familiar - looked up here - best known for radical abolitionist newspaper, "The Liberator"
Nathaniel Hawthorne - "The Scarlet Letter" (read in same English teacher's class) & "The House of Seven Gables" - I mainly remember this from SEEING this house while visiting Massachusetts as a child
Henry James - not familiar - he is primarily known for a series of novels portraying the encounter of America with Europe
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - poet - "The Children's Hour" - I LOVED this poem as a child and memorized it for a presentation - I can even remember the little red book I learned it from
Amy Lowell - not familiar - poet who won Pulitzer Prize for Poetry posthumously
Herman Melville - "Moby Dick" (I should have remembered "Billy Budd", too - we have an audio CD in the car) - I even mentioned "Moby Dick" yesterday!
Theodore Geisel/Suess - "Green Eggs & Ham"
Henry David Thoreau - "Walden" - same English teacher! (Oh, and I had her 2 years - 10th & 11th)
Phillis Wheatley - slave/poet
John Greenleaf Whittier- familiar - Quaker poet & a "Fireside Poet" - so now, of course, I want to learn about the Fireside Poets :-)

Overall, I was happy with what we remembered. But, I also realized that we are not learning much poetry or about many poets. So, I hope to fix that this year! We'll start by reading a book about Emily Dickinson I've had on our bookshelf - "The Mouse of Amherst" by Elizabeth Spires. It's about a mouse that lives with Emily Dickinson.