Effie Lee Newsome was one of the first African American poets who primarily published poems for children. She was the author of one volume of poetry, Gladiola Garden: Poems of Outdoors and Indoors for Second Grade Readers (The Associated Publishers, 1940), and she published numerous poems in the Crisis, Opportunity, and other leading journals of the Harlem Renaissance. She also edited the children’s column “Little Page” in the Crisis. Her poems helped her young readers celebrate their own beauty and recognize themselves in fairy tales, folklore, and nature.

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