A Song for August: The Inspiring Life of Playwright August Wilson

Gr 1-5–This biography elegantly recounts award-winning, acclaimed poet and playwright August Wilson’s formative years. Wilson was born in an industrial urban city of “smoke and soot” during the height of the war, racialized tensions, and loneliness, yet “there was a song inside of him.” He found delight and creativity amongst the mundane, then one day, “he felt his song going to sleep.” Wilson goes on to write to express his inspiration towards a historical figure, Napoleon Bonaparte, and “wrote a paper so good, his teacher didn’t believe he wrote it.” Denmead’s account animates the story of young Wilson as he becomes fulfilled by freedom from formal school structures, grasps the power of words, books, libraries, and “food he didn’t know he was hungry for,” the blues, then realizes “his own song” as he “uses the voice of his own soul to rise up.” Harris’s serene hues skillfully depict Wilson’s desire for creativity through visions of wonder and a typewriter. He subsequently brings still and silent characters to life and finds success in theater arts by chronicling Black American experiences of slavery, freedom, and civil rights.