Amazing Peace: A Christmas Poem

by Maya Angelou, Steve Johnson (Illustrator), Lou Fancher (Illustrator)

Overview

In this beautiful, deeply moving poem, Maya Angelou inspires us to embrace the peace and promise of Christmas, so that hope and love can once again light up our holidays and the world. “Angels and Mortals, Believers and Nonbelievers, look heavenward,” she writes, “and speak the word aloud. Peace.”

Read by the poet at the lighting of the National Christmas Tree at the White House on December 1, 2005, Maya Angelou’s celebration of the “Glad Season” is a radiant affirmation of the goodness of life and a beautiful holiday gift for people of all faiths.


From the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780375982750
Publisher:	Random House Children's Books
Publication date:	11/03/2010
Sold by:	Random House
Format:	eBook
Pages:	40
File size:	62 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	6 - 10 Years

About the Author

Maya Angelou, poet, writer, performer, teacher, and director, was raised in Stamps, Arkansas, and then moved to San Francisco. In addition to her bestselling autobiographies, beginning with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, she has also written a cookbook, Hallelujah! The Welcome Table; five poetry collections, including I Shall Not Be Moved and Shaker, Why Don’t You Sing?; and the celebrated poem “On the Pulse of Morning,” which she read at the inauguration of President William Jefferson Clinton.


From the Hardcover edition.

Hometown:

Winston-Salem, North Carolina

Date of Birth:

April 4, 1928

Place of Birth:

St. Louis, Missouri

Education:

High school in Atlanta and San Francisco

Read an Excerpt

It is the Glad Season.
Thunder ebbs to silence and lightning sleeps quietly in the corner.
Floodwaters recede into memory.
Snow becomes a yielding cushion to aid us
As we make our way to higher ground.

Editorial Reviews

Gr 3 Up

This poem was largely inspired by the terrible natural disasters occurring throughout the world when Angelou was invited to read at the 2005 White House tree-lighting ceremony. Thus, the opening lines rumble and roil almost menacingly to illustrate the climate of doubt and anxiety into which the spirit of Christmas arrives. Hope enters as a whisper and grows until it is "louder than the explosion of bombs." The harsher aspects of the world fade as people of all faiths and races join together in trust and brotherhood. Johnson and Fancher's paintings, rendered in oil, acrylic, and fabric on canvas, elegantly depict a calm, snow-blanketed village where children play, families shop, and artisans ply their crafts. People gather at the Town Hall for sweets and cocoa, and then, in a candlelight procession, join again to sing beneath the stars. This is a comforting book that gets to the heart of what Christmas should mean. As an added treat, Angelou reads the poem on the accompanying CD.-Linda Israelson, Los Angeles Public Library

School Library Journal

Angelou's poem considers peace as a joyous concept that rises up during the Christmas season, drawing in and including those of all faiths, sweeping everyone along with its power. This visual interpretation of the poem follows the residents of a small town as they trek through deep snow to gather at their town hall for a holiday celebration. Although there are lighted Christmas trees throughout the town, this particular celebration is a nondenominational community dinner and candle-lighting, with people of many faiths and backgrounds joining together in peaceful solidarity. Johnson and Fancher's understated, mixed-media illustrations use fabric scraps for plaid and checked coats on the townspeople, with darker fabrics for buildings and thick brushstrokes of white paint over cloth for the snow. Although doubtlessly well-intended, the author's invitation to Buddhists, Confucians, Jains, Jews and Muslims-not to mention "Nonbelievers"-to join in the celebration of "the Birth of Jesus Christ / Into the great religions of the world" is at best tone-deaf and at worst frankly assimilationist. (Picture book/poetry. 6 & up)

Kirkus Reviews

Holiday Roundup, USA TODAY, December 4, 2008

From the Publisher