Review: Poetry & Fiction

Title: More Spice Than Sugar: Poems about Feisty Females

Compiled By: Lillian Morrison

Illustrator: Ann Boyajian

ISBN: 0-618-06892-9

Citation: Morrison, Lillian. More Spice Than Sugar: Poems about Feisty Females. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2001.

Review: Lillian Morrison celebrates the role of the feisty female in the aptly titled poetry collection More Spice Than Sugar. Real women, some widely known such as Georgia O'Keefe and some unknown are depicted through a variety of poetic formats. This carefully selected anthology contains works from many well-known poets including Emily Dickinson, Nikki Giovanni, and J. Patrick Lewis as well as many lesser-known. The different voices of the poets shine as they honor the independent women they admire with rhythmic verse and engaging vocabulary. Ann Boyajian's sketch-like illustrations accompany each poem and bring a face to each woman depicted. Readers, especially females, will be inspired by the strong women represented in More Spice Than Sugar.

Potential Use: More Spice Than Sugar would pair well with the 2011 Pura Belpré Award Honor Book The Firefly Letters: A Suffragette's Journey to Cuba by Margarita Engle. This novel details the lives of three feisty females: Frederika, a Swedish traveler; Cecilia, a young slave; and Elena, daughter of the Cuban gentry. These three young women are brought together in a fight against society's expectations, similar to many of the women portrayed in Morrison's collection. Because Cecilia and Frederika are based on real women, More Spice Than Sugar would serve as an excellent extension for readers to peek into the lives of other real-life independent women who went against the norm to follow their dreams. See the poem below for an excerpt from More Spice Than Sugar.

[The Poet Emily] by Emily Dickinson
They shut me up in Prose –
As when a little Girl
They put me in the Closet –
Because they liked me "still" –

Still! Could themselves have peeped –
And seen my Brain – go round –
They might as wise have lodged a Bird
For Treason – in the Pound –