cover image Dare to Dream... Change the World

Dare to Dream... Change the World

Edited by Jill Corcoran, illus. by J. Beth Jepson. EDC/Kane Miller, $15.99 (40p) ISBN 978-1-61067-065-4

Inspired by coverage of the 2011 uprising in Egypt, literary agent Corcoran gathers 30 poems from Lee Bennett Hopkins, Alan Katz, Joyce Sidman, and others. Themes of social justice and possibility run through the poems, with roughly half paying stirring tribute to activists, artists, and iconoclasts, from Anne Frank and Jonas Salk to Steven Spielberg and the founders of YouTube. Jepson’s crisp collagelike illustrations present a gently textured backdrop. Julia Durango’s ode to author/illustrator Ashley Bryan is paired with a powerful evocation of the notion of grace by Tracie Vaughan Zimmer (“It’s bitter words swallowed/ before they push past/ the gates of angry lips”). Bruce Coville’s closing poem, “Ripples,” reads like a call to action: “No one acts in isolation/ And no act leaves the world the same./ Words and gestures ripple outward,/ What shores they reach we cannot name.” All ages. (Mar.)