Many recent releases celebrate the words and deeds of African-American heroes and heroines. Each offers wise words and strong examples to emulate.
Leading by example
Donna Jo Napoli introduces children to Kenyan Wangari Maathai in Mama Miti (Simon and Schuster, ages 6 and up). The Nobel-winning woman grew up hearing stories about how the fig tree nurtured her people in the highlands of Africa. Succeeding pages show how Wangari spreads the idea of planting nourishing trees to those who suffer in other regions. Kadir Nelson's artwork features patches of pattern as bright as Wangari's advice, visually representing how she "changed a country, tree by tree," and became Mama Miti, the mother of trees, a woman "who taught her people the ancient wisdom of peace with nature."
More picture book biography heroes:
Phil Bildner, The Hallelujah Flight (the story of aviator James Banning) (Putnam)
Ann Ingalls and Maryann Macdonald, The Little Piano Girl: The Story of Mary Lou Williams, Jazz Legend (Houghton)
W.D. Myers, Muhammad Ali: The People's Champion (HarperCollins)
Andrea and Brian Pinkney, Sojouner Truth's Step-Stomp Stride (Jump at the Sun)
Sharon Robinson, Testing the Ice: A True Story About Jackie Robinson (Scholastic)
Matt Tavares, Henry Aaron's Dream (Candlewick Press)
Wisdom through time
Difficult times call for wise and consoling advice, as shown in books that describe darker times in African-American history.
Andrea Pinkney uses an inspiring quotation to open her vibrant Sit-In: How Four Friends Stood Up By Sitting Down (Little Brown, ages 6-10). "These were Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s words that got them started, 'We must meet hate with love.'" Pinkney is referring to the four students who integrated the Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro. She continues with a wonderful blend of food metaphors, word plays, rhythms and repetition as she tells how David, Joseph, Franklin and Ezell "were treated like the hole in a doughnut - invisible" during a time when the "law's recipe for segregation" was "do not combine white people with black people." Brian Pinkney serves up energetic illustrations that add spice to his wife's piquant words.
Patricia Polacco, January's Sparrow (Philomel, ages 8 and up). Illustrations and text recount the true story of the Crosswhite family in this long picture book. The protagonist, young Sadie, remembers how her family fled the cruel Kentucky slave life to make a home in Marshall, Mich., and how they've just begun to feel safe when slave catchers threaten them.
Aaron Reynolds, Back of the Bus (Philomel, ages 5-10). The author's lyrical voice and the realistic illustrations by Floyd Cooper place us squarely in the body of a young black boy whose innocent viewpoint gives a dramatic response to Rosa Park's courageous stand as she refused to give up her bus seat.
Paula Young Shelton, Child of the Civil Rights Movement (Schwartz and Wade, ages 7 and up). Raul Colon links poignant images to free-verse poems written by the daughter of Andrew Young. Paula offers her innocent and intimate perspective of the greatest leaders of the '60s who coddled her while she naively witnessed their plans to take on Jim Crow.
Echo in song and odes
There's a reason songs and poems are passed from generation to generation, as these books prove.
Ashley Bryan, All Things Bright and Beautiful, based on the hymn by Cecil F. Alexander, (Atheneum, ages 2 and up). Bright collages match the message of the well-known hymn that proclaims the glory of nature. Bryan's collages wow the eye as the song's words speak to the heart. The music and words to all four stanzas are included in the book.
Ntozake Shange, We Troubled the Waters (Amistad, ages 8 and up). Dialect, viewpoint and lyricism combine in strongly voiced viewpoints of floor-scrubbers and garbage men, as well as those determined to vote, be schooled and escape the KKK. Everyday folk are lauded as eloquently in the odes as historically recognized figures such as Rosa Parks and Malcolm X.
Stuart Stotts, We Shall Overcome: A Song that Changed the World (Clarion, ages 10 and up). CD, music, lyrics, photographs and text tell how, as Pete Seeger states in his foreword, "the power of singing together shows us that change is possible." An extensive text covers the history of the song and how it changed during protests and marches and unified those who sang it.
Carole Boston Weatherford, The Beatitudes: From Slavery to Civil Rights (Eerdmans, ages 7 and up). The poet writes in the voice of God and tells how he has been with African-Americans from Middle Passage to Barack Obama's oath. Full-page illustrations describe significant moments, and at the bottom of every page appears a verse from the Beatitudes. Poems, pictures and verses merge in a book certain to initiate discussion.
And a new heroine
First-time author Irene Latham pens Leaving Gee's Bend (Putnam, ages 8-12). The protagonist is 10-year-old Ludelphia Bennet. In 1932 Gee's Bend, Ala., her community combats sorrows by telling and stitching stories into warm, comforting quilts. Medical treatment is scant; Ludelphia describes how her clouded eye has been covered with a patch since a woodchip from her father's ax struck her.
Still Ludelphia's home is as warm as a Gee's Bend quilt until Ludelphia's mother suffers a difficult childbirth, her cough worsens and she lies close to death. Ludelphia decides she must leave the only home she has ever known to fetch a doctor from Camden, a town that's 40 miles and a river crossing away. With only her mother's wisdom and a quilt and needle for company, Ludelphia and her rich voice and strong stitches tell her amazing story. The book powerfully blends history, voice, time and place and a feisty young heroine who survives charges of witchcraft, prejudice and the forces of nature.
