I recommend this book for high school youths. This book provided information about sonnets along with American history. He explains his paintings at the end of the book. The illustrator did a nice job on the cover. Photos of the body in the open casket were printed and broadcasted around the world. She wanted the world to see what was done to her son, whose bloated body was found in the Tallahatchie River badly beaten and shot in the head. What was unusual was that Emmett’s mother Mamie Till Mobley wanted the body of her son shown in an open casket at his funeral. Murdering blacks in the south was not so unusual, at that time, nor was the acquittal of the white men who allegedly killed him, by an all-white male jury. Emmett was a fourteen (14) years old black youth, who in 1955, while visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi was murdered for allegedly whistling at a white woman. The author explains who Emmett Till was at the end of the book. While Nelson has presented fifteen (15) sonnets the last is just a compilation of the first sentence of the fourteen (14) sonnets. The title also refers that this is a wreath of sonnets which is fourteen (14) sonnets where the last sentence of the sonnet and the first sentence of the next sonnet are the same or very close. I liked that Nelson explains what an Italian or Petrarchan sonnet is and how she came to write it, before she presents the sonnet.

Nelson has written an Italian sonnet for Emmett Till. While you will find this book listed in genres as a children’s picture book I think it is most appropriate for high school. Published By: Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston 2005

Author: Marilyn Nelson, Illustrated by Philippe Lardy

A wreath for emmett till poem