Page 43 - SpringBoard_CloseReading_Workshop_Grade6_Flipbook

Close Reading of poetry (continued)
key ideas and deTails
What is the speaker’s attitude about the library? Which details help convey
her tone?
key ideas and deTails
What is the purpose of lines 31–32? How is this stanza different from the rest of the poem?
And sometimes sarah vaughan sing black coffee 15 Which I now drink
It was just called music
There was a bookstore uptown on gay street Which I visited and inhaled that wonderful odor Of new books
20 Even today I read hardcover as a preference paperback only As a last resort
And up the hill on vine street
(The main black corridor) sat our carnegie library
Mrs. Long always glad to see you
25 The stereoscope always ready to show you faraway
Places to dream about
Mrs. Long asking what are you looking for today
When I wanted Leaves of Grass or alfred north whitehead
She would go to the big library uptown and I now know 30 Hat in hand to ask to borrow so that I might borrow
Probably they said something humiliating since southern Whites like to humiliate southern blacks
But she nonetheless brought the books
Back and I held them to my chest 35 Close to my heart
And happily skipped back to grandmother’s house Where I would sit on the front porch
In a gray glider and dream of a world
Far away
40 I love the world where I was
I was safe and warm and grandmother gave me neck kisses When I was on my way to bed
But there was a world
Somewhere 45 Out there
And Mrs. Long opened that wardrobe But no lions or witches scared me
I went througKnowing there would be Spring
key ideas and deTails
Giovanni ends the poem with an allusion to the book The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. What effect does this have? Does the reader of the poem need to have read the book to understand the poem? Explain.
42 SpringBoard® English Language Arts Grade 6
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