Black History Month

How sad to lose Coretta Scott King within a few months of Rosa Parks, and during the month when we celebrate African American's contribution to our history. Below I listed a few finds from 2005 for teachers, librarians and of course parents that can be read year-round.

It’s not easy cramming 400 years of black history into a single month, and the shortest one at that. Children’s picture books can at least offer a snapshot of a person or a period, a single thread from the vast, multi-hued tapestry of the American story.

Not to stretch the textile analogy too thin, but Show Wayliterally weaves black history into its pages in this story of quilts sewn by author Jacqueline Woodson’s slave ancestors. The quilts were secret maps to the North, but in Woodson’s rhythmic narration become links to the women who toiled to keep the hope of freedom alive.

The art, like Woodson’s family history, is pieced together one scrap at a time. Illustrator Hudson Talbott used watercolor, chalk, muslin and pieces of work shirts and Bermuda shorts for collages that recreate news headlines, auction posters and the quilts themselves, as if layering black history so we can put the story in proper context.

And context is everything. Like tiles in a mosaic, sometimes you have to step back for that bigger picture to emerge. And those tiles are the stories of individuals who struggled, usually anonymously, but whose stories make for great reads.

Baseball’s more than a game in both Catching the Moonand Let Them Play, it’s a symbol of an “all-American” sport that not all Americans could enjoy equally. The 12-year-old black boys in Margot Theis Raven’s Let Them Play form a Little League team in South Carolina in 1955 only to see the white teams drop out to form a segregated league, dashing their championship hopes.

Catching the Moon tells the story of Marcenia Lyle, the only woman to play professional baseball for a Negro League team, capturing a moment in her girlhood when her skills won over the manager of the St. Louis Cardinals. In both, we see kids who play by the rules but still strike out, pardon the pun, through no fault of their own, and then go on to the bigger victory of personal integrity, pride, honor, whatever you wish to call the swelling feeling when you’ve made the bad guys eat crow.

Both books feature art that’s lifelike and detailed, as do several other notable books about African Americans that came out last year. The School Isn’t White follows a black family that painfully desegregates a Mississippi school district, and Joe-Joe's First Flight is a fictional work about a boy whose imagination soars when his father is denied a job as a pilot at a rural airport in the 1920s.

The realism makes the stories more stark and affecting, hammering home the details that separated blacks from whites: the work clothes and shabby houses, the “colored only” signs, but also the fierce determination and fiery looks, and that certain set of the jaw when you’re forced to swallow back your indignation.

Both Alec's Primerand The Old Africanalso fall loosely in this category too, with their respective stories about slavery. Alec Turner was a real man, born into slavery, who learned to read and fought in the Civil War before realizing his dream of freedom. The Old African tells a magical realist story about an old slave who leads his people back to Africa by walking across the ocean floor. The art, which used graphite, gouache, pastel and watercolor on paper, makes the unreal become real, with its relentlessly dark palette. Its unsparing look at slave holds and captivity might be a touch too graphic for the littlest readers, however.

Illustrators who departed from realism usually went down the Expressionist path, and none more dramatically than in Rosa, which recreates events on the fateful day when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Ala. bus. The book was recently picked as a runner-up for the Caldecott Medal.

It’s worth noting again Bryan Collier’s multi-media collages for the loving way he dwells on her glittering eyes, her glowing skin, her radiant peace that clearly clues us in to an inner strength invisible to the white people who glower and threaten and hover. He gives us close ups of those eyes staring straight at us (repeated on the cover) as the police officer leans in, and then of her hands twisting her purse strap, heightening the tension as he draws the confrontational moment out. Brilliant stuff.

Just so you don’t think every worthwhile book on black history has to be about oppression and resistance, pick up Baby on the Way, where a grandmother recounts her birth on a rural farm to her very urban grandson. Sean Squalls used swaths of earthy colors and a flattened landscape for a folksy feel, and author Karen English, like many other narrators mentioned above, seems to relish the rhythms and expressiveness of black English.

A Season for Mangoesbrings us to a Jamaican funeral and Mama Panya's Pancakesto a Kenyan village, if you’re interested in a small taste of the African diaspora. Again, these are just individual tales, but step back after reading them and a larger, more complete picture emerges of a people dispersed but unbowed.

Comments

[doulicia]

I LOVE this web site/ blog. I just printed out this page to take home to my son who is fascinated by the civil rights movement.

I am also a little envious of your idea here. What a great thing to review children's books.

I always say in another life I'd love to be a children's librarian or, heaven forbid, a children's author.

Anyway, keep up the great work.

[Anne]

I appreciate your kudos. I've been struggling with whether or not to keep this site going. Yes, on the one hand, I get lots of free books. I was also a finalist in the Best of Blogs competition. Yaay!

But my dreamed-of "big break" didn't happen at my local newspaper. The book review editor instead hired a friend of his to review children's books. Sigh.

This takes a lot of my time and energy, but then I look at my stats counter and I want to chuck the whole thing and go hide.

So, thanks for the boost. I needed it today. :-)

[brettdl]

Don't give up yet.

[elswhere]

I was just thinking, as I clicked over just now, that one day this site will be featured somewhere and you'll hit the big time and I'll be able to say I was reading way back when almost no one else knew about it. And I'll feel so cool.

[Christopher King]

We must move forward. There is nothing in the past except tools of guidance to help us in the future. As a progressive brother who happens to be black, for Black History Month I unveil my inventions, and they are substantial in terms of technology, law and media.

http://christopher-king.blogspot.com/2006/02/king-naacp-orr-reno-bauer-make-black.html

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/2/16/92318/5542#11

[Susan Taylor Brown]

Might I be so bold as to mention my own book from black history?
Robert Smalls Sails to Freedom. You can read more about it at: http://www.susantaylorbrown.com/robertsmalls.html

[Anne]

Susan: Go for it! Authors are always welcome around here. Looks like a very cool book too.

[Anne]

Here's the link to Susan Taylor Brown's book.

[Mary and Rich Chamberlin]

It's great to see our book "Mama Panya's Pancakes" mentioned, and that people are aware of the great struggle to reach Dr. King's colorblind society. We saw a video last night at a Baha'i meeting about Katrina in New Orleans, and how evacuees were stopped at the West bridge purely based on race. Truly the antithesis of Adika's loving inclusiveness, so we've gotta keep writing and educating. Keep up the great page!

[Anne]

Katrina was a tragedy and national disgrace that created psychic wounds in African Americans and horrified all people of goodwill. We'll be analyzing its lessons for years ... but will we learn from it? I hope so.

Thanks so much for stopping by and for your kind words.