A Boston Globe Best Book of 2015
A Huffington Post Best Picture Book in Biography for 2015
A 2016 Notable Children's Books in the English Language Arts
Selected by the Great Lakes Great Books Award committee, a program of the Michigan Reading Association, for the 2016-2017 state-wide literature program
★"An eminently friendly introduction to both the poet and his spirit—deceptively simple, just like its subject." —STARRED review, Kirkus Reviews
"an uncommonly delightful picture-book celebration of Cummings' life" —Maria Popova, Brain Pickings
★"An eminently friendly introduction to both the poet and his spirit—deceptively simple, just like its subject." —STARRED review, Kirkus Reviews
"The title of this book (Enormous Smallness) is perfect. Many of us think of poems as small things, but as much as anyone, E. E. Cummings showed us that even the smallest stanza could hold enormous meaning. Lovingly written (Burgess is himself a poet) and ingeniously illustrated, this book is a treasure for both fans of Cummings, as well as those discovering his poetry for the first time." —The Huffington Post
"Di Giacomo's capricious collages create a lively interplay between pictures and words, and visual motifs such as birds and elephants intermingle with samples of Cummings's work. Burgess delivers a thorough and lovingly crafted homage to a writer whose poems 'were alive with experimentation and surprise.'" —Publishers Weekly
"WOW. Dare I saw I was carried away by the awesomeness of enormous SMALLNESS? It has been a while since I have seen such a perfect pairing of story and art. It will give me great pleasure to put it into the hands of small (and tall) and introduce another generation to the genius of e. e. cummings." —Mona, Jabberwocky Book Store, Fredericksburg, VA
"It's important to get your kid to sleep, but a good bedtime reading does a lot more—it can inspire them in ways that will serve them well later on. That's the message of Enormous Smallness, a new picture book biography of the poet E.E. Cummings." —Fatherly
"A fabulous biographical picture book, this book is a great introduction to E.E. Cummings and his work." —Waking Brain Cells
"The author includes major life events and poems, always circling back to a playfulness born in the poet's childhood and carried through his entire life, nurtured by parents and teachers. What makes this such a successful children's book is the author and artist's focus on Cummings's ability to channel and hold onto the inventiveness of childhood." —Jennifer M. Brown, Children's Editor, Shelf Awareness
"Plus it's beautiful. Each page is a collage of words and visual elements that work in the manner of a Cummings poem. Letters fall from his mouth during graduation, and the more he writes, the more letters make up parts of the background colors of the pages." —Unshelved
"My second graders, with no prompting, absolutely LOVED Enormous Smallness, a perfect picture book biography of the great e.e. cummings by Matthew Burgess. (Without invitation, they applauded!) They were silent and receptive the whole way through (that means they were with me. It was as though they realized they can be poets! At least that's what I hope.)"—Bri Johnson, New York City Librarian
"It's a book that will be hugely encouraging to young children who want to write, be poets, or just do things a little differently from the norm." —Whitney Morton Woodcock, Portland Book Review
"This is a remarkable book that gives an example of one kid who did everything differently—and came out OK. In fact, he became one of our greatest poets. The book is fun, informative, and It sends a valuable message with wit, creativity and beauty; it tells kids its OK to "color outside the lines" and to have an inner life not driven by others' expectations." —Enormous smallness: A Story of E.E. Cummings is a KBACH/Changing Hands Bookstore Book of the Month Pick
"This is a book that will satisfy both the adults who read it to children, and the children who are lucky enough to hear it." —The San Francisco Book Review
”To illustrate Cummings fascinating life one would need an especially creative artist and Kris Di Giacomo does just that, combining a tapestry of words (many of them poems) in appealing settings like a tree house that was heated with a wood stove, the busy streets of New York and Paris and the farmlands of New Hampshire.” —Charles Sutton, Vermont Country Sampler
"This is a lovely little poem of a book; appropriate enough, since it details the life and poetry of E.E. Cummings . . . a book that will be hugely encouraging to young children who want to write, be poets, or just do things a little differently from the norm." —The Portland Book Review
05/01/2015
Gr 3 Up—This enchanting picture book biography introduces children to the life and work of e.e. cummings, one of America's most innovative poets. With a tree house in the city and a cabin by the woods in the country each summer, cummings grew up surrounded by family and nature, and his imagination soared. He began writing poetry from the age of three, which his mother recorded. Written in verse, the text is accessible and lends itself well to read-alouds. The book itself is a work of art, full of thick pages of whimsical, full-spread illustrations in a palette of grays, blues, browns, and greens. Burgess chronicles the poet's childhood and early adulthood, beginning and ending in the Greenwich Village studio where he would spend nearly 40 years of his life. Several child-friendly poems, including "who are you, little i" and "in Just-," are interwoven into the text (and appended). Pair with Jen Bryant and Melissa Sweet's Caldecott Honor title A River of Words: The Story of William Carlos Williams (Eerdmans, 2008) for a unit on poetry. VERDICT A unique and inspiring introduction.—Barbara Auerbach, New York City Public Schools
★ 2015-02-16
A picture-book biography of the poet, with appropriately quirky multimedia illustrations. Burgess takes young readers from the birth of Edward Estlin Cummings in Cambridge in 1894 through his decades in Greenwich Village as an established poet. The economical text emphasizes his connections to the natural world, manifesting in his first poem, composed at the age of 3, and the loving support of his parents. Even as a boy, he played with words, inventing new ones and "squish[ing] others together." Burgess chooses details that will speak to child readers: Estlin's idyllic, streamside summers; his treehouse in Cambridge (equipped with a stove!); the encouragement of a favorite teacher; the "Krazy Kat" comic strips he affixed to his dorm walls; and especially, his effervescent, rule-breaking approach to writing poetry. Using muted, modernist hues, Di Giacomo incorporates letters and words into her double-page spreads, jumping them through a hoop in an imagined circus scene that emphasizes Estlin's fearless wordplay and depicting them springing from the open pages of his first published book along with the titular Tulips & Chimneys. The use of a classic typewriter typeface to set cummings' words apart from Burgess' text is nicely apropos. Backmatter includes a chronology, the five poems, dated, that appear earlier in the book, an author's note, and acknowledgments (which double as a bibliographic essay). An eminently friendly introduction to both the poet and his spirit—deceptively simple, just like its subject. (Picture book/biography. 6-10)
