16 Words: William Carlos Williams & “The Red Wheelbarrow”

This nonfiction picture book explores poet and doctor William Carlos Williams and the observations behind “The Red Wheelbarrow,” a poem of sixteen words. Williams’s patient, African American street vendor Thaddeus Marshall, and his wheelbarrow help inspire the poem. The story moves through Williams’s medical work and the spare moments in which he notices people and ordinary scenes around him. It contrasts his daily work with Marshall’s work selling vegetables in Rutherford, New Jersey. A rainy-day setting and the act of looking closely show how a familiar sight can become a poem.