At a young age, the poet E. E. Cummings discovered an open, playful love of language and words that lasted throughout his life. This picture book account of his life follows Cummings through his idyllic childhood with a house full of family (including a creative, encouraging mother and an imaginative, engaged father) as well as his time in the country and a sturdy tree house in the city, all the way to his adulthood as an established poet. Cummings was always a keen observer of everything around him, thriving on the small things in life. He also eagerly embraced experimentation with words, language, and art. Wanting people “to look at words on tiptoe,” Cummings crafted poems that celebrated the small in words, attracted the reader’s eye in print, and captured new ways of looking through his poems. With art and design that echo Cummings’s playfulness and imagination, this biography paints an engaging and thoughtful portrait of the poet. Cummings’s poems are incorporated throughout the text and in the end notes along with an author’s note. (Ages 6–10)