BLACK ART HISTORY: JACOB LAWRENCE’S NARRATIVE SERIES ABOUT BLACK PERSEVERANCE AND AMERICAN REBELLION INSPIRED A CACHE OF CHILDREN’S BOOKS
Published in 1996, “Toussaint L’Ouverture: The Fight for Haiti’s Freedom” is a collaboration between Lawrence and celebrated children’s book author Walter Dean Myers (1937-2014). In the introduction to the book, Lawrence recalls the compelling stories he heard from Harlem street orators about black history figures such as L’Ouverture.
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6 CANADIAN BOOKS FOR YOUNGER READERS TO CHECK OUT DURING BLACK HISTORY MONTH
The Journey of Little Charlie follows a 12-year-old boy who agrees to track down thieves in order to settle his debts with a cruel man named Cap’n Buck. But when Charlie discovers the thieves he’s hunting are people who escaped from slavery, his conscience intervenes.
Why Christopher Paul Curtis writes best from a place of fear….
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POEMS TELL THE STORY OF THE FIRST BLACK STUDENTS AT TENNESSE SCHOOL IN ‘THIS PROMISE OF CHANGE’
“We had no idea that this would have a historical impact,” said Jo Ann Allen Boyce about that August morning in 1956 when she and 11 other teenagers first took their place as students in the formerly whites-only high school in their small Tennessee town.
Boyce and co-author Debbie Levy tell the story of Boyce’s experience during these months of hope, pain, and change in “This Promise of Change.”
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HOUGHTON MIFFLIN HARCOURT ANNOUNCES EDITORS FOR THE BEST AMERICAN SERIES 2019
The Best American Science and Nature Writing; guest editor Sy Montgomery
- Sy Montgomery has written over 20 books on animals, nature and the environment. Her most recent work is the New York Times bestselling memoir How to be a Good Creature.
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‘MARTIN RISING’ NAMED 2019 LEE BENNETT HOPKINS POETRY AWARD WINNER
Andrea Davis Pinkney and “Martin Rising: Requiem for a King” have been selected for the 2019 Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award, presented annually to an American poet or anthologist for the most outstanding new book of poetry for children and administered by the Pennsylvania Center for the Book and the Penn State University Libraries.
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ALICE B. MCGINTY/TWO PICTURE BOOKS DESERVING OF ACCOLADES
“Before She Was Harriet” written by Lesa Cline-Ransome, illustrated by James E. Ransome, was a Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor book.
The story opens with a detailed watercolor illustration in which we see Harriet Tubman’s face, worn by the years, with wise, tired eyes.
“Here she sits/an old woman/tired and worn/her legs stiff/her back achy,” we read.
Then we turn the page to see a younger woman, “but before wrinkles formed/and her eyes failed/…she could walk for miles/and see clearly/under a sky lit only with stars”
