Purple Mountain Majesties (Reading Railroad Books)

by Barbara Younger Author

(From Amazon): In the summer of 1893, a young professor named Katharine Lee Bates took a train west from Masachusetts to Colorado. On her trip, she saw the beauty and the grandeur of our nation-its mountains, fertile prairies, and shining seas-and was moved to compose a poem that would later be set to music and stir generations to come. Glowing paintings and lyrical text blend together to show the magnificence of the United States of America and how it inspired Katharine Lee Bates to pen the poem that would become our nation's unofficial national anthem. Illustrated by Stacey Schuett "Younger makes a living character out of Bates, whose quirks and full-bodied charm gracefully flow from the letters and diary excerpts." (Kirkus Reviews, pointer review)