To Go Singing Through the World: The Childhood of Pablo Neruda

by Deborah Kogan Ray

Book Overview

Pablo Neruda grew up in the rough and wild frontier town of Temuco, Chile. His father was a railroad man and not inclined to draw out the introspective boy. However, his stepmother, descended from the Mapuche people, was gentle and nurturing and told him stories of Chile's native people. But in her husband's presence, she was as silent as Pablo. So the child found refuge in nature and in books. And secretly he wrote down his thoughts. With the encouragement...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374376271
• ISBN13: 9780374376277
• Release Date: October 2006
• Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux
• Length: 40 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 9.1" x 11.2"
• Age Range: 8 to 13 years
• Grade Range: Grades 3 to 8

Customer Reviews

perceptive and powerful picture-book biography for all ages

Pablo Neruda, winner of the 1971 Nobel Prize in literature, has been called "the greatest poet of the 20th century--in any language." But before Neruda achieved international acclaim, he was once a shy, stuttering boy in a pioneer town in southern Chile, South America. This extraordinary picture book delves into Neruda's unique childhood. Author Deborah Kogan Ray seamlessly weaves together excerpts from the poet's poems, memoirs, and verse autobiography, along with her own perceptive and powerful narrative, to create a portrait of his early years. The author's evocative full-page watercolor illustrations underscore the magic and mystery of the text. Growing up in the shadow of the volcano Mount Llaima, Pablo spent his days silently observing the people in his small town or exploring the wild and wonder-filled rainforest that surrounded his frontier home. He longed to express what he saw and heard and felt, but the words would not come out. Teased and bullied by his classmates, young Pablo retreated into himself. He "wore his silence like an overcoat." His words found an outlet only when the boy began to write poems in his math notebook. Not until his teens, when the poet Gabriela Mistral arrived in his town as head of the girls' upper school and slowly coaxed him out of his silence, did Pablo share this notebook. It was Mistral who sent him off to university, where he flourished. Pablo's time and place may be very different from ours, but shyness, bullying, and the need for self-expression will always exist. The shy, perhaps bullied reader may recognize a kindred spirit and gain courage and hope from Pablo's story. Like a good poem, this rich picture-book biography can be appreciated on more than one level. It invites young readers into the world of poetry by bringing to life an ordinary yet extraordinary boy. Sharing Naruda's childhood may foster in readers a recognition of poetry as more than just an attractive arrangement of words on a page. Readers of To Go Singing Through the World will be led on to savor works by the poet himself.

To Go Singing Through the World

"I applaud this book for bringing attention to a great Latin American poet many children in the US may not already know about. Lyrically written.