Arnold adoff poems

American children's writer

Arnold Adoff (July 16, 1935, in Bronx, New York – May 7, 2021, in Yellow Springs, Ohio) was an American children's writer. In 1988, the National Council of Teachers of English gave Adoff the Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children. He has said, "I will always try to turn sights and sounds into words. I will always try to shape words into my singing poems."

Biography

Adoff grew up in the South Bronx, New York, the son of Jewish immigrants from a town near the Polish-Russian border. He enrolled in the Columbia University School of Pharmacy but transferred to City College of New York, where he received a B.A. in history and literature. He married Virginia Hamilton in 1960 and they lived in Europe briefly before moving back to New York City. Adoff taught social studies in Harlem and the Upper West Side of New York. Adoff and Hamilton eventually moved to Yellow Springs, Ohio, where Adoff lived until his death in 2021.^[1][2][3]

"I began writing for kids because I wanted to effect a change in Ame

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Obituary: Arnold Adoff

Children’s poet, author, and anthologist Arnold Adoff, widely noted for his inventive poetry style and for depicting African American experiences in his work, died on May 7 at his home in Yellow Springs, Ohio, following a brief illness. He was 85.

Adoff was born July 16, 1935 in New York City and grew up in the South Bronx where his Jewish parents, who immigrated from Russia, had settled. Adoff’s father was a pharmacist whose store was just a block away from the family home in what Adoff described in a Something About the Author interview as “a mixed working-class neighborhood.”

Adoff’s recollections of childhood include a house that was filled with magazines and newspapers, music (from his mother’s violin playing and the radio), and lots of passionate discussions that he characterized as “volatile, emotional, as well as intellectual.” He credits his parents and grandparents for passing on to him the way they “valued of their Jewish heritage and liberal causes, and

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Arnold Adoff started writing when he was eleven years old-when he discovered that "girls and poetry were different from boys and prose." This was not the limit of his inspiration, however. Born in a Russian immigrant family and raised in New York City's East Bronx, he read "everything in house" to satiate his curiosity. Later, he would carry stacks of books home from Bronx libraries. In his world, "books and food, recipes and political opinions, Jewish poetry and whether the dumplings would float on top of the soup" were all worthy topics for literature.

After graduating from New York's City College with degrees in history and government, Adoff went on to Columbia University and then the New School for Social Research. He stayed in New York for twelve years afterward, teaching and counseling public school students in Harlem and the Upper West Side. His experience with young adults gave him a simplified outlook for writing to the audience. "I just try to create real kids and say real things for real readers."

This focus, combined with his civil rights activism in college, fles