Preaching to the Chickens: The Story of Young John Lewis

by Jabari Asim and E.B. Lewis

Congressman John Lewis’s great oratory skills didn’t just develop overnight.... read more

Congressman John Lewis’s great oratory skills didn’t just develop overnight. Even when he was a small child he was practicing for what he thought would be a life in the ministry, although it eventually became a political career. Growing up on a farm in Pike County, Alabama, young John didn’t have many people around to serve as an audience, so he regularly preached to his family’s chickens, mimicking the ministers he had heard in church. And the chickens really seemed to listen to him. They “nodded and dipped their beaks as if they agreed.” Based on an anecdote Lewis included in his memoir, Walking with the Wind, Asim’s eloquent account is handsomely illustrated with E. B. Lewis’s sun- dappled, realistic watercolor illustrations. (Ages 4–8)

© Cooperative Children's Book Center, Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison, 2017

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