I Can Make a Difference: A Treasury to Inspire Our Children

Marian Wright Edelman has drawn from a variety of cultures and peoples to compile these timeless stories, poems, songs, quotations, and folktales that speak to all children to let them know that they can make a difference in today's world.

Marian Wright Edelman has drawn from a variety of cultures and peoples to compile these timeless stories, poems, songs, quotations, and folktales that speak to all children to let them know that they can make a difference in today's world.

Phyllis Kennemer, Ph.D. - Children's Literature

Each of the twelve sections in this book highlights such worthy goals as being loving and treating others with respect, being courageous, aiming for high ideals, caring and serving, being honest, persevering, being determined, and being compassionate. Selections within each section feature quotations from well-known people, poems, fables, folk tales, songs, stories, and full-page portraits of significant role models, including Sojourner Truth, Albert Schweitzer, George Washington Carver, and Mother Teresa. This collection includes quotations and pieces from such diverse sources as Pablo Casals, Maya Angelou, Helen Keller, Martin Luther King, Jr., Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, Shel Silverstein, Pete Seeger, Aesop, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, the Prophet Mohammed, and the Bible. Moser's sensitive, full-color illustrations appear as full-page paintings and smaller insets throughout the book, complementing the text and providing further inspiration. Adults will appreciate this worthy anthology of a wide variety of pieces in different styles and lengths that can be read with young people as conversation starters or, simply, as special shared moments. This is a lovely book to read cover to cover or dip into at various points as the mood strikes. 2005, HarperCollins, Ages 6 to 12.

Marian Wright Edelman is the founder and president of the Children's Defense Fund. She is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Measure of Our Success: A Letter to My Children and Yours, and eight other books. She is the winner of many awards for her work, including a MacArthur Fellowship, the Albert Schweitzer Humanitarian Award, a Heinz Award, and a Niebuhr Award. In 2000, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Robert F. Kennedy Lifetime Achievement Award for her writings. Edelman is a graduate of Spelman College and Yale Law School. She and her husband live in Washington, D.C., and have three children and four grandchildren.