“Life doesn’t frighten me” By: Maya Angelou

“Life doesn’t frighten me”

By: Maya Angelou

Paintings By: Jean-Michael Basquiat

Stewart, Tabor & Chang; New York

(Poetry: Single poem picture book)

            This was a continuous poem book.  Each page gave a new line in the poem and a very distinct poem.   The theme of the book is life doesn’t frighten me at all.  It talks about fairy tales, school and tough guys and how none of them frighten me at all.  I read this book several times, each time noticing something new.  This book is one that students will find something interesting or to talk about on each page.  There is a text to self connection in that we all on occasion try to convince ourselves that nothing frightens us at all.  We have all at one point in our lives used those words.  Maya has a very unique writing style, so it was easy to make a text to text connection with some of her other works.  It has the same rhythmic nature of “Bump d’Bump- Play me like Blind man’s dance, and bind my eyes with ignorance, Bump d’bump bump d’bump”