When I saw the bulletin announcing the passing of Ashley Bryan on Feb. 4 at 98, I was alone in my office. Needing to connect with someone who would understand the magnitude of the loss, I texted a friend: “Ashley. [Teary face emoji]” Then I recited Langston Hughes’ poem “My People” to myself and imagined the children’s-literature world reciting it along with me.

Ashley Bryan will be remembered for many things: his fine art, executed with vigor in a variety of media; his puppets, many constructed from flotsam that washed up on the shores of Maine’s Little Cranberry Island, where he made his home; his children’s books, some 50-plus of them that he either illustrated, wrote, or both; his passion for bringing African and African American stories and songs to children. I think I will remember him best as a lover of poetry and a deep believer in its power to forge connections.

Anyone lucky enough to see Ashley’s speak will remember the way he pulled an entire room into a poem. “Things!” he’d proclaim. “Things!” his audience would chorus back to him. “By Eloise Greenfield!” he’d add. “By Eloise Greenfield,” his audience would repeat. Line by line, he’d lead his audience through this tale of a child who gets some candy at the corner store and builds a sand castle at the beach only to realize “Ain’t got it no more.” But: “Went to the kitchen / Lay down on the floor / Made me a poem / Still got it / Still got it.” It didn’t matter if he was in a church basement filled with wriggling preschoolers or a banquet hall filled with librarians—the invitation was extended without reservation and accepted in kind.

He had a repertoire that became familiar to those of us who gather to celebrate children’s literature: Greenfield’s “Things,” of course, but also several by Hughes, including “I, Too, Sing America,” “Dreams,” and, always, “My People.” It crossed my mind more than once to marvel at how the shared recitation of Hughes’ celebration of Black beauty welcomed a multiracial audience into the beloved community. That was Ashley’s magic.

In quieter, more private moments he’d talk about learning German via the poems of Rainer Maria Rilke while on a Fulbright in Europe in the 1950s, sharing snippets in both languages. One night he stopped over with my family en route from a conference we both attended in Vermont as he made his long way back home to Downeast Maine, a storm having kept the ferry from running. He and my husband tossed lines of a Robert Hayden poem back and forth till they got it down right.

Ashley Bryan gave us 98 years of beauty, joy, and fellowship. The world is a colder place without him, but those of us he joined with poetry have memories to keep us warm.

Vicky Smith is access services director at Portland Public Library in Maine and a former young readers’ editor at Kirkus.