JOHN HENRY by Julius Lester, pictures by Jerry Pinkney

Lester, Julius. John Henry. Illustrated by Jerry Pinkney. New York: Puffin Books. 1994. ISBN0140566228.

For almost 3 decades, Julius Lester and Jerry Pinkney have combined their enormous talents to bring us superb and authentic African American literature and art.  John Henry is one such collaboration.  Julius Lester has written a strong text to tell the tale of the steel driving man, John Henry, who is a member of the folk legend hall of fame along with Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill.  Jerry Pinkney’s illustrations are museum worthy.  In fact, in 2014, the Philadelphia Museum of Art added the cover illustration of John Henry to their permanent collection. 

 Jerry Pinkney has illustrated over 100 children’s books.  In addition he has been commissioned for several other projects including a series of postage stamps commemorating famous African Americans.  His research when preparing for a project attests to his passion for authenticity for the story he is illustrating.  His illustrations in John Henry depict a handsome, strong, confident, and kind African American in traditional clothing for its setting in the 1870’s.  Using pencil, colored pencil and watercolor, Pinkney draws intricately detailed realistic scenes of daily life, including men and women, children and workers, light and dark skin, white and black features.

Although the story has tall tale elements such as growing from birth to manhood in 24 hours, there are also elements of John Henry’s character that makes one hope he is an actual historical figure.  One of the main events in the story is the historical construction of the Big Bend Tunnel in  the Allegheny Mountains for the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad from 1870-1873.  The historicity of John Henry has not been proven, however.  The symbol that John Henry has become stands for the indomitable spirit of humanity in general and African Americans in particular.  

Jerry Pinkney has earned many awards and deserves many more.  He received a Caldecott Honor Medal for John Henry.  The book has also garnered many other awards including a Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, a Parents Magazine Best Book, and an ALA Notable Book.  Booklist notes that Jerry Pinkney illustrates the story with “rich colors borrowed from the rocks and the earth, so beautiful that they summon their own share of smiles and tears.”

Any folklore collection would be incomplete without this book.  Study of folklore would also be incomplete without this story.  A folklore day when students can dress up or make props for various folklore characters would enliven the learning process.  A class could also compare and contrast the characters of John Henry, Pecos Bill, Dona Flor and others.  Whatever the project, the moral message of John Henry could be the best part of the experience and that is “Dying ain’t important. Everybody does that.  What matters is how well you do your living.”

BROWN GIRL DREAMING by Jacqueline Woodson

Woodson, Jacqueline. Brown Girl Dreaming. New York: Nancy Paulsen Books. 2014. ISBN

9780399252510

Audio Book:

Woodson, Jacqueline. Brown Girl Dreaming. Read by the author. New York: Listening Library. 2014.  ISBN 9780553397260

Brown Girl Dreaming is the autobiography of author Jacqueline Woodson written in free verse.  When I first read this book, I felt sure it would be best to hear it read by the author, and I was not disappointed.  Once I tracked down an audio version, I was so pleased to see on the cover that Jacqueline Woodson herself was the reader.  Because this book is written in poetry, and because poetry is appreciated best if read orally, I feel it is important to listen to the book at least once.  Being read by the author is an even greater bonus because we can be assured that the pauses and line breaks will be given the proper emphasis. 

Jacqueline Woodson is the featured character since this is her story, but her story is rich with the characters of her family as well.  Parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles, and friends are intricately painted in words.  She writes with honesty, presenting the good and the bad of her childhood memories with childlike frankness. 

Her story is set in the turbulent 60’s and 70’s as she lives with her African American family in both the north and the south.  Her memories relate authentically the history of the times as she conveys the differences in the African American experience on both sides of the Mason Dixon line.

In addition to her ethnic diversity, she also experiences being set apart by the strict doctrines of the Jehovah Witness faith which her care-givers faithfully practice.  The main thread of her story, however, is her persistence to become a writer in spite of cultural soil that rarely cultivated such a dream.  One of my favorite poems is called “stevie and me” (p. 227).  In this poem she tells of her first experience with a book “with a brown boy on the cover.

                                                                   Stevie.”

This of course is a reference to John Steptoe’s ground breaking contribution to multicultural children’s literature, Stevie (1969).  She continues:

“the picture book filled with brown people, more

brown people that I’d ever seen

in a book before.”

“I’d never have believed

that someone who looked like me

could be in the pages of the book

that someone who looked like me

had a story.”

Woodson has received prestigious recognition for Brown Girl Dreaming including the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work-Youth/Teens, a John Newbery Honor Medal for 2015, and the National Book Award for young People’s Literature.  The Book List starred review views this “memoir in verse is a marvel as it turns deeply felt remembrances of Woodson’s…into art.”  School Library Journal claims, “This should be on every library shelf.”

I would echo that recommendation as a must have in every library.  It is an important contribution to African American literature by a well known and respected author.  Targeting grades 4-7, it is full of cultural and universal relevance.  Not only is it valuable in understanding the civil rights movement, but also speaks to family conflict, learning problems, sibling rivalry, family love, disappointment, sadness, prejudice, injustice, and of course dreams of the future.  You could pair it with other literature such as Kadir Nelson’s Heart and Soul, the Story of America and African Americans to deepen understanding of African American history.  You could pair it with Through My Eyes by Ruby Bridges and compare and contrast Jacqueline’s and Ruby’s school experiences.  My Brother, Martin could be included as another nonfiction account of an historic leader of the Civil Rights Movement as it is written by Martin Luther King’s older sister, Christine King Farris.    

Remember to find Brown Girl Dreaming on audio.  Unabridged on 4 discs you get 4 hours of Woodson herself telling her own story.  You’ll also want to see the book version so you won’t miss the family tree diagram at the beginning or the family pictures at the end.  After that you’ll probably want to read or reread her other contributions in a new light after knowing her better.

Bridges, Ruby. Through My Eyes: the autobiography of Ruby Bridges. New York: Scholastic. 1999.

Farris, Christine King. My Brother Martin: memoirs of a childhood with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King. New York: Simon & Schuster. 2002.

Nelson, Kadir. Heart and Soul: the Story of America and African Americans. New York: Harper Collins. 2011

Steptoe, John. Stevie. New York: Harper & Row. 1969.

LET IT SHINE by Ashley Bryan

Bryan, Ashley. Let It Shine, three favorite spirituals. New York:  Atheneum Books for Young Readers. 2007. ISBN 9780689847325

In characteristic Bryan BRIGHT, Let It Shine certainly does.  Bryan has illuminated three well known spirituals, “Let It Shine,” “When the Saints Go Marching In,” and “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.”  My kindergartners had no trouble recognizing these spirituals, and the brilliant colors used for illustration seemed to make them sing out with gusto.  Ashley Bryan has been a highly respected author, illustrator and educator with many awards on his resume.  Let It Shine was awarded the Coretta Scott King Award and the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award.

The amazing illustrations are intricate collages of cut construction paper making every spread a rainbow of color.  Hands, children, flowers, buildings, skies, etc. burst with color and design.  The movement in the designs encourages the movement of each song as he captures the power of the spirited lyrics.  There are profiles of African/African American children and adults on almost every page.  In the addendum, Bryan explains that the songs, called Negro Spirituals, originated from African American slaves who were not allowed to read or write.  Their creativity, however, could not be enslaved, and the songs have out lived their creators by many generations.

The bright colors celebrate the colorful spirit and beauty of the African American culture.  Yet, the themes of peace and world culture are also present.  To introduce “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands,” he has a spread of buildings easily recognized from around the world, such as igloos, pyramids, teepees, huts, tall apartments, domed cathedrals, and monuments.  He celebrates living in peace with his images of the lion with the lamb, the goat with the tiger, and the dove with the olive branch.  

The overall emphasis of this book to me is song.  The Book List Review says, “This will be hard to read without breaking into song.”  Other than a praying boy and a sleeping baby, every person in the book is singing!  The musical notation and lyrics of all three songs are included in the back of the book, so I would recommend this book for a joyous song session.  But this book should be included in any unit of African American culture because music is such a large part of any culture.  African Americans have influenced music all over the world, and the Negro Spiritual, Jazz, and Rap are just a few of their major contributions.  Let us join Ashley Bryan as he bids us “Come, let us sing the Spirituals!”

THE LILY POND by Annika Thor

Thor, Annika. The Lily Pond. New York: Delacorte Press. 2011. ISBN 9780385908382 

The Mildred L. Batchelder Award honoree for 2012, The Lily Pond, is the sequel to A Faraway Island, the Batchelder Award Winner for 2011.  This award is given to the publisher of the most outstanding book originally published in a foreign language and then translated into English.  Originally published in Swedish and translated by Linda Schenck, these stories have been adapted for television and have become a popular series in Sweden.   

The books chronicle the lives of two Jewish Viennese sisters whose parents send them to a small island near Sweden to live with a foster family when they perceive the threat of Nazi Germany.  The Lily Pond finds the older sister, Stephie, as a thirteen year old, who earns a scholarship to a school in the city of Goteborg, Sweden, and is thus separated from what has become familiar to adjust to new surroundings again.  In the city she lives with a rich family who pride themselves on their good deed of taking Stephie in, while treating her as inferior. They have a son, Sven, who is five years older than Stephie and very attractive and attentive to Steph.  Consequently, Stephie develops a huge crush on Sven that plays a major part in the story. 

This historical novel involves the 1940’s cultures of Austria, Germany, and Sweden, the Jewish race, and the Pentecostal religion during WWII.  Steamboats, trams, bicycles, and cobblestones depict the era as do the references and worries of what Stephie’s Jewish parents are enduring from the Germans back home in Vienna. In Sweden, undercurrents of socialism start to bubble up among the political youth. The fear and persecution of the times filter into Stephie’s life in spite of being moved away from the acute danger.  

Alongside the authenticity of the setting and daily life of the times, I found less authenticity in some of the characters.  The rich family who boards Stephie is stereotypical in their superior attitude toward her, and Aunt Marta’s character is stereotypical of a person of faith who is caricatured as an overbearing fanatic.  The other characters are mostly believable, but the relationship between Sven and Stephie was not.  Although I like Sven's character very much, I had a hard time believing that a young man of eighteen would have the time or inclination to mentor a female boarder of thirteen like a big brother.

Although I found some of the plot a bit weak and unauthentic, I believe that for the age it was written, it holds value and entertainment.  In addition to the Batchelder honor, it is also an ALA-ALSA Notable Children’s Book.  I would recommend it to young readers who are learning about WWII and the Holocaust.  It deals with serious subject matter like prejudice and hate in a way that would be age appropriate.  School Library Journal lauds it “a good addition to World War II literature,” and Book List adds “a compelling look at World War II-era Sweden.”

TEN LITTLE FINGERS AND TEN LITTLE TOES by Mem Fox & Illustrated by Helen Oxenbury

Fox, Mem. Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes. Illustrated by Helen Oxenbury. Orlando: Harcourt, Inc. 2008. ISBN 9780152060572

Oh, for the love of Mem Fox!  While I was carpooling my children into adulthood, Mem Fox added another adorable book to her already award winning collection that I had missed until now.  Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes is a sweet, rhythmically addicting, rhyming poem, charmed by the talents of Helen Oxenbury’s irresistible illustrations.  Oxenbury’s watercolor cherubs are so cute you will want to pinch their chubby cheeks while reciting the refrain, “And both of these babies, as everyone knows, had ten little fingers and ten little toes,”  

Fox and Oxenbury combine their talents to offer a beautiful first multicultural experience for the very young.  What better time to encourage multicultural acceptance than with the open-heartedness of a little child?  The illustrations carry the bulk of the multicultural substance of the book as Oxenbury has drawn four pairs of children with contrasting shades of skin, hair color, and eye color.  The unique features of the children are drawn to capture the essence of the various nations rather than a specific representation.  

The settings of the birthplaces of the children also reinforce their global heritages.  The text mentions, “far away,” “town,” “hills,” “ice,” and “tent” to represent global locations and the illustrations match the text.  The clothing that the children wear also mark their differing cultures as does the mention of “eiderdown,” the soft, insulating down of the eider duck found in the northern latitudes of North America.

No stranger to diversity, Mem was born in Australia, but moved with her missionary family to South Africa as a baby.  South Africa was her home until adulthood when she moved to London and later back to Australia where she lives now.

Although one reviewer pointed out the “misstep” of the North Pole Inuit child pictured with a South Pole penguin (School Library Journal), most critics are delighted with the Fox-Oxenbury duo that “aims a message of diversity and tolerance at very young children” (Book List).  

Mem Fox’s Time for Bed, has been a baby gift staple of mine for several years.  Now I will add Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes to my baby gift list. Strong rhyme, beautiful illustrations, interactive counting, diversity, and similarity make it the perfect lap read aloud.  Additionally, it is a perfect read aloud for Toddler Story Time at the library.  Even my kindergartners will enjoy it when we do number 10 in math.  They secretly love to remember the “good ol’ days” when they were “little” and the charm of Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes will catapult even grandma into single digits.