KDL Recommends

Coming Home: From the Life of Langston Hughes

ISBN: 0399226826

Title: Coming Home: From the Life of Langston Hughes

Author: Floyd Cooper

KDL Description:

A portrait of the childhood of poet Langston Hughes chronicles his early life with his grandmother and the events, personalities, circumstances, and rhythms that shaped his world and his writing.
Lexile Level: 770

Amazon Description:

Young Langston Hughes was a dreamer. The thing he dreamed most about was having a home. Yes, he had a home with his Granma Mary Langston, but his papa was in Mexico and his mama was trying to be a star. Langston longed for a real home.

His storyteller granma did give him heroes like Booker T. Washington and Langston’s own Buffalo soldier uncles, heroes who were black just like him. And there were things he loved — the big, bright library in Kansas City, the jazzy sound of blues music on a street corner, and the rhythms of the Baptist Church near Auntie Reed’s.

But it was when he began to write, incorporating these people, places, and rhythms into his poetry and prose, that Langston reached people all over the world, and discovered where his home really was.

In this first picture book written by illustrator Floyd Cooper, the beloved Langston Hughes comes to life in words and pictures as a hero for all — poets, dreamers, children, adults, anyone who has ever thought of what home means to them.