Borrowed Names: Poems About Laura Ingalls Wilder, Madam C.J. Walker, Marie Curie, and Their Daughters
*Starred Review* In 1867, three women who achieved great success were born: writer Laura Ingalls Wilder, entrepreneur Madam C. J. Walker, and scientist Marie Curie. All three had complicated relationships with their daughters, relationships that Atkins explores in this unusual volume of poetry. Each section follows one daughter from young childhood to adulthood, sketching out the facts of her life, but creating impressions of the emotional lives beyond the facts. Rose Wilder Lane grows up in rural poverty. Constricted by her mother’s expectations, she leaves the Wilder farm to work, marry, and travel, but returns and helps to shape her mother’s books. As a child, A’Lelia Walker watches her mother wash clothes for a meager living, but after her mother’s hair products make them wealthy, A’Lelia grows up to become a patron of the Harlem Renaissance. Curie’s elder daughter, Irène, knows early on that her mother’s focus is on her work with radium. As an adult, Irène continues that work, earning her own Nobel Prize. In vivid scenes written with keen insight and subtle imagery, the poems offer a strong sense of each daughter’s personality as well as the tensions and ties they shared with their notable mothers. Writing with understated drama and quiet power, Atkins enables readers to understand these six women and their mother-daughter relationships in a nuanced and memorable way. Grades 6-9. --Carolyn Phelan