WLA2000
CAYAS Breakfast
Friday, May 19 @ 7:30 a.m.

Arnold Adoff

I began writing for kids because I wanted to effect a change in American society. I continue in that spirit. By the time we reach adulthood, we are closed and set in our attitudes. The chances of a poet reaching us are very slim. But I can open a child's imagination, develop his appetite for poetry, and more importantly, show him that poetry is a natural part of everyday life. We all need someone to point out that the emperor is wearing no clothes. That's the poet's job.

Arnold Adoff

Arnold Adoff has been writing poetry since puberty, when he made the discovery that "girls and poetry were different from boys and prose." Yet poetry was only one of his many interests when he was young. He was born and raised in the East Bronx section of New York City: in his childhood, "books and food, recipes and political opinions, Jewish poetry and whether the dumplings would float on top of the soup" were all of equal importance. "I read everything in the house, "he says, "and then all I could carry home each week from the libraries I could reach on the Bronx buses."

An accomplished poet, biographer, and anthologist as well as a respected educator, Arnold Adoff is recognized as one of the first -- and finest -- champions of multiculturalism in American literature for children and young adults.

At New York's City College, Mr. Adoff majored in history and government; after receiving a BA degree, he went on to study at Columbia University and the New School for Social Research. For twelve years he worked as a teacher and counselor in public schools in Harlem and on the Upper West Side of New York. He has also taught in educational projects at New York University and Connecticut College and though he has given up teaching to devote full time to his writing, he continues to lecture and conduct workshops at schools, libraries, and colleges across the country.

Arnold Adoff is married to award-winning children's author Virginia Hamilton. They have two grown children, Leigh Hamilton and Jaime Levi. The Adoffs live in a redwood house in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Mr. Adoff travels around the country lecturing and working with children in schools, teaching poetry and creative writing. He also spends a great deal of time with his own children who live in New York City.

In talking about his work, Arnold Adoff often uses the word "music." "Writing a poem," he will say, "is making music with words and space." Or, "A fine poem combines the elements of meaning, music, and a form like a living frame that holds it together." To produce this special kind of music, he appeals to the eye as well as the ear. Anyone who has read a book of his poems knows that the way the individual words and letters are set upon the page, the physical shape of each poem, makes a vital contribution to the whole.

In 1988, Arnold Adoff received the NCTE Award for Poetry for Children for the body of his work

Some favorite books by Arnold Adoff include:

  • Hard to be Six
  • Chocolate Dreams
  • Greens
  • All the Colors of the Race
  • Eats
  • OUTside/Inside Poems Today
  • We are Brother and Sister
  • Black IS Brown Is Tan
  • I Am the Darker Brother
  • Slow Dance Heartbreak Blues