Constance (Connie) Levy coming to Poetry from Daily Life

Hi everyone,

CONNIE LEVY lives in St. Louis, Missouri. We have been friends for at least thirty years, dating back to the times when we spoke at the Children’s Literature Festival on the campus of Central Missouri State University in Warrensburg, Missouri. Connie is another poet who started early. She wrote her first poems in first grade. Her first book of poetry, “I’m Going to Pet a Worm Today,” was published in 1991, when she was 60 years old. Every now and then Connie and I check to see if we know another children’s poet in Missouri with one or more books of poems published by a traditional publisher. Unless someone has moved into the state recently, we don’t know of anyone else. In a state with 6.2 million people, we need more children’s poets!!

Connie’s poetry has received numerous awards, including the Lee Bennett Hopkins Award for Excellence in Children’s Poetry, The Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor Award, American Booksellers “Pick of the Lists”, National Council of Teachers of English “Notable Book”, The Bank Street College “Children’s Books of the Year”, the “William Allen White Award List (Kansas): and the New York Public Library’s 100 titles for “Children’s Books”. 

Her guest column will appear in print this Saturday in Springfield News-Leader and online on Sunday. I’ll share the link to that when it becomes available on Sunday morning. Her column will also be in five other newspapers in Missouri, Kansas, and South Dakota. You’re in for a treat. Thank you, Connie Levy!