I can’t remember anything said by the speaker at my high school commencement. I don’t bother listening to campaign speeches or debates anymore. Oscar acceptance speeches bore me to tears.
All of that could be because I’m a visual learner, not an auditory learner. Or it could be because when it comes to speeches, “they just don’t make ’em like they used to.”
Speechmaking was once an important part of civic life. Politicians made them, of course, but ordinary people also gave impromptu speeches while standing on “the soapbox” — at times quite literally a wooden box that once held soap.
Public speakers were once responsible for writing their own speeches, and they might be based on notes hurriedly scribbled on the back of an envelope. Now politicians employ professional speech writers who earn big salaries to write the words that are later read from a teleprompter. The speeches are carefully crafted to provide sound bites for news feeds and improve ratings, not necessarily to inspire or uplift listeners.
The present day notwithstanding, speeches have played an important role in the history of the United States. They have united citizens at crucial moments. They’ve garnered support for important legislation. And bad ones have been the downfall of some politicians.
The four picture book biographies described below illustrate just how electrifying speeches have been in our nation’s history.
Abe’s Honest Words: The Life of Abraham Lincoln
By Doreen Rappaport
Illustrated by Kadir Nelson
In 2012, Ford’s Theatre Center for Education and Leadership in Washington, DC, constructed a 34-foot tower with over 15,000 books about Abraham Lincoln — none of them duplicates. I doubt that any of them are more eloquently written or more beautifully illustrated than Abe’s Honest Words.
In brief but lyrical text, Doreen Rappaport gives the details of Lincoln’s life, and each page is punctuated with a quotation from Lincoln’s writing or speeches. Her approach to Lincoln’s life focuses on the events that influenced his skill as an orator.
For example, in a description of Lincoln’s work ferrying people and goods on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, Rappaport writes:
In between the pull of the pole
and the splash of the water,
he listened to hunters spin tall tales
of a mighty marksman
“half man, half alligator,”
and sailors describe giant mosquitoes
that could kill a man.
He heard lawyers tell how they used words
to gain justice for ordinary folks.
He heard preachers quote from the Bible:
“A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
He stored these different voices in his heart
and wove them into his own words.”
Rappaport describes the events surrounding some of Lincoln’s most famous speeches, including the Gettysburg Address, his issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation, and his second inaugural address. Quotes from each appear throughout the text. Rappaport anchors them in descriptions of Lincoln’s deeply held personal beliefs.
Kadir Nelson’s bold illustrations are a perfect match for Lincoln’s powerful words. Each takes up three quarters of a two-page spread, and the people in them seem almost larger than life. They show Lincoln’s transformation from a lanky schoolboy to a grief-stricken but determined president.
The back matter for the book includes a timeline of Lincoln’s like and sources of additional information. It also includes the text of the Gettysburg Address.
You can learn more about Doreen Rappaport here. More information about Kadir Nelson can be found here.
A Time to Act: John F. Kennedy’s Big Speech
By Shana Corey
Illustrated by R. Gregory Christie
In A Time to Act: John F. Kennedy’s Big Speech, Shana Corey tells young readers on the very first page that “the people who make history aren’t just famous leaders or characters in stories. They’re real people, just like you. Sometimes they ARE you.”
Her approach to John F. Kennedy’s life supports that view. She presents him as a politician who was too concerned about getting re-elected to act decisively on civil rights legislation until the actions of thousands of “real people” forced him into action.
After outlining the basics of Kennedy’s childhood and young adulthood, Corey describes political and social conditions in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s. She gives the details of how segregation functioned. Then she describes the growing civil rights movement, beginning with the lunch-counter sit-ins that started in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1960.
Corey goes on to describe the many important steps Kennedy took soon after taking office: the space program, the Peace Corps, etc. But she returns to the fact that Kennedy was slow to act even as black people’s push for civil rights was met with more and more violence.
Kennedy finally decided to follow where his people were leading him. He gave a speech on national television in which he declared that the nation would “not be fully free until all its citizens are free … Now the time has come for this Nation to fulfill its promise … It is a time to act.”
Kennedy then asked Congress to pass civil rights legislation that would outlaw segregation in public places and end discrimination in jobs.
Corey ends by telling young readers: And so now it’s your turn, to choose your course, to speak up, to act, to move the world forward — to make history.
Corey provides a lengthy author’s note providing much more detail about Kennedy’s role in the civil rights movement. She again speaks to young readers, asking: “Should leaders be at the front of change? Or is it regular citizens who create change, who start the conversation?”
Not everyone agrees with Corey’s interpretation of Kennedy’s life. This biography could definitely spark some interesting classroom discussions!
An interesting note about R. Gregory Christie’s illustrations: I had recently learned to read when Kennedy made his speech about civil rights. The illustrations in this book resemble the illustrations in children’s books that I remember from that time. Children of today won’t know that, but I think it shows excellent attention to detail on the part of the illustrator.
You can learn more about Shana Corey here. More information about R. Gregory Christie can be found here.
Sojourner Truth’s Step-Stomp Stride
By Andrea Davis Pinkney and Brian Pinkney
Many biographies of Sojourner Truth have been written, including many for children. I chose Sojourner Truth’s Step-Stomp Stride for this blog post because the post is about famous speeches, and because this book culminates with a famous speech that Sojourner Truth made.
What stands out about this biography is the folksy but powerful language in which it is written. For example, it begins her life story this way:
Sojourner was born a slave. Her master named her Isabella. Sojourner’s mother, Mau-Mau Bert, and her father, James Baumfree, took a first look at their child and decided to call her Belle. Seems her newborn’s cry was ringing in good news.
Nothing quiet about that girl.
The story describes how, when Sojourner escaped from slavery, she “ran right up to hope’s front door.” She had come to the farm of Quaker abolitionists, who gave her shelter and then helped her buy her freedom.
The story continues with Sojourner becoming a powerful speaker. Even though she couldn’t read and write, “she could sure speak her mind.” An abolitionist friend helped her memorize every word in the Bible, and she used its teachings in her speeches.
In 1851, Sojourner “step-stomped” to a women’s rights convention in Akron, Ohio, where “there weren’t any big, black, beautiful preachers in that church.” There were mostly white, male ministers who gave speeches about why women didn’t deserve the same rights as men.
And “Sojourner put one big-black-beautiful foot in front of the other and stomped on the floorboards of ignorance that were underneath.” That’s when she made her most famous speech, slamming her fist into the podium after each point for emphasis.
She said, “You say women need to be helped into carriages and lifted over ditches. Nobody ever helps me into carriages. And ain’t I a woman?”
She said, “I have plowed. And I have planted. And I have gathered into barns. No man could head me. And ain’t I a woman?”
To the man who said it was God’s will that men be the rulers, she said, “Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman. Man had nothing to do with Him!”
Making that speech was by no means Sojourner Truth’s most important contribution as an abolitionist and an advocate for civil rights and women’s rights, but this biography shows how she wielded words in a powerful way.
Brian Pinkney’s illustrations are as fiery and energetic as Sojourner Truth’s spirit.
You can learn more about Andrea Davis Pinkney here. More information about Brian Pinkney can be found here.
Martin’s Big Words: The Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
By Doreen Rappaport
Illustrated by Bryan Collier
In Martin’s Big Words, Doreen Rappaport used the same format as she did with Abe’s Honest Words, and the result is just as powerful. In this book, she uses not just the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., himself to highlight events in his life but the words of important figures in his life as well.
For example, when she describes his seeing the White Only signs in his hometown, she notes that he felt bad until he remembered what his mother had told him, “You are as good as anyone.” She writes that young Martin heard his father preach and thought, “When I grow up, I’m going to get big words, too.”
Martin Luther King, Jr., studied the words of the Bible and those of Mahatma Gandhi. All of these influences became a part of the powerful sermons and speeches he made as an adult.
King became involved in the growing Civil Rights Movement, always encouraging others to practice nonviolent resistance. This biography of King points out that when he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, it was because “he taught others to fight with words, not fists.”
The words from King’s famous speech during the 1963 March on Washington are among his “big words” quoted throughout the book: “I have a dream that one day in Alabama little black boys and girls will join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.”
Bryan Collier’s illustrations are stunning. He states in an illustrator’s note that he used collage as his medium because “it allows me to piece together many different things that have no relationship to each other, until they’re put together to form a oneness.” The illustrations do just that, making a cohesive whole from the many influences on Martin Luther King, Jr.
You can learn more about Doreen Rappaport here. More information about Bryan Collier can be found here.
These four biographies can show young readers the power of spoken words when those words are carefully chosen and eloquently spoken. They show that there’s more to speechmaking than sound bites and tweets.