"A powerful tale that should help children of all ages embrace the fact that dead does not have to mean gone. (Picture book. 4-9)"
In this age of automaticity, electronic immediacy, and carpe diem, this book delivers a rare exultation: remember the Ancestors.Read full book review >
"Not just for Halloween, it's a solid, not-too-scary ghost story for any season. (Picture book. 5-9)"
When a sudden cold breeze wakes Malcolm David out of a sound sleep, he suspects ghosts and asks his ringring bird to wake him the next night "between Not-Yet-Yesterday and Almost-Tomorrow" to investigate.
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"Eminently moving and highly recommended, especially as an alternative to To Kill a Mockingbird for less able teen readers. (Historical fiction. 12 & up)"
This slim yet essential new tale of the Jim Crow South unfolds primarily through the eyes of Ansel Anderson, only son of the storekeeper in the small town of Davis.
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"Dedicated to a white civil-rights worker, this is a tribute to those who 'act in ways history does not condone and, by doing so, begin to change that history.' (author's note) (Fiction. YA)"
Ekundayo is a spirit inside an African woman on a slave ship coming to America.
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"Lester's prose is powerful and poetic, and Pinkney outdoes himself in hauntingly expressive, often wordless double-page paintings that masterfully capture the strength and suffering of the African people. (Illustrated fiction. 12+)"
Whips sink into bare flesh and red blood glistens in Lester's painfully vivid, four-part story of the horrors of slavery that evolves into a fantastical escape myth.
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"It's an effort that could easily founder under its own earnestness, but the lighthearted, avuncular tone and vivid art combine to make a surprisingly effective package. (Picture book/nonfiction. 5-10)"
A comforting direct address asks readers to think of themselves as stories, and to consider the elements of their stories: families, favorite foods, hobbies, etc.—"Oh.
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"A must for anyone who lives a life immersed in books and stories. (Nonfiction. YA, adult)"
Author of the Newbery Honor-winning To Be a Slave (1968) and many other fine works—sometimes funny, sometimes forceful, always thought-provoking—Lester tells his own story here.
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"Like a piece of sophisticated music, this will engender profound emotional responses—but younger readers may have trouble grasping its subtler themes. (illustrator note) (Picture book. 9-12)"
Lester looks to the silence that gives meaning to the noise all around us in this powerfully told original tale, as deep-eyed faces alive with character peer from Clapp's sweeping, shadowy accompanying art.
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"Furthermore, they'll always be looking for that one last ladder—after all, it leads straight to heaven. (author's note) (Picture book. 3-9)"
Shaniqua, Bruce, Mrs. God, and, of course, God, return after What a Truly Cool World (1999), to reveal the answer to a question children are bound to wonder about.
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"Excellence wears many faces: this works as biography, as source material for school reports, and as compelling storytelling. (bibliography, recommended listening) (Collective biography. 7-10)"
What is clearly a labor of love creates quite an extraordinary collective biography for young people, from a veteran observer.
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"Almost ridiculously contrived, it's nevertheless a compelling story suffused with raw and honest emotion, the heightened nature of which will naturally appeal to teens. (Fiction. 12+)"
A brother and sister try in their separate ways to cope with the ultimate family cataclysm.
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"Readers who find Aesop's fables stodgy and Jon Scieszka's incomprehensible might want to have a go at these. (Illustrated fiction. 9-11)"
The author of What a Truly Cool World (1999) twangs his silly bone again, producing six fables that are well south of serious, though carrying kernels of truth.
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"Pinkney's mixed-media illustrations are colorful, spirited, and as gorgeous as anything he's ever done, but fail to save this story. (Picture book. 5-8)"
"A truly cool book about how—perhaps—things came to be. (Picture book. 3-9)"
Lester (Black Cowboy, Wild Horses, p. 661, etc.) has conceived a creation story that proves even God needs to have a little fun.
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"Lemmons may not have the name recognition of Nat Love or Bill Pickett, but his exploits were no less spectacular. (Picture book. 8-10)"
The creators of Sam and the Tigers (1996) proffer this fact-based tale of a black cowboy named Bob Lemmons, famed for his ability to track and capture herds of wild mustangs.
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"Readers who make that effort will be amply rewarded. (Picture book/nonfiction. 10-12)"
In a stirring picture book for older readers, Lester (Sam and the Tigers, 1996, etc.) creates meditations on the journey of Africans to slavery, on the lives of people held as slaves, and on runaways, the Civil War, and the meaning of freedom.
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"As usual, Lester's prose is fine and funny read-aloud, but the creative interplay of text and pictures doesn't reach the heights of this team's John Henry (1994). (Picture book. 6-8)"
A sassy retelling of Little Black Sambo, set in the imaginary land of Sam-sam-sa-mara, where animals are people, too, and all the humans are named Sam.
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"Lester revitalizes what for many would remain an unread text, through the all-too-fashionable concepts of notoriety and controversy, and the familiar old process of sedition. (Fiction. 10+)"
Lester has taken on an immensely ambitious task, rewriting Shakespeare's tale and making a bridge to the play.
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"They're powerful minimalist landscapes with figures on the surrealist edge—paintings that have you turning the pages for more. (Folklore/Picture book. 6-10)"
While working in the fields, a mother lays her child in the shade of a tree.
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Onto the page bounds the colossus John Henry, man of legend, man of myth (though the preface keeps things off balance on that point).
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"A forceful and startling look into the minds and hearts of those involved in the civil rights movement, this novel raises compelling questions about the successes and failures of that movement."
Lester (The Last Tales of Uncle Remus, 1994, etc.) offers a potentially controversial and intimate account of the life and death of a black civil rights leader as told 25 years later by the leader himself and the people who loved him.
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The fourth volume of a landmark retelling completes the roster, with Lester's witty contemporary voice ("I reckon I should push the pause button on this story 'cause you want to know how the axe could see her coming," or, "she did the laundry and...the colored clothes stood up and started singing a commercial") still serving the original tales' subversive humor with splendid originality.
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"Possibly the concision and flavor will increase the book's attractiveness to those who need it most, and the list of sources is valuable for further study."
From the man who is usually "On the Other Side of the Tracks," a judicious selection of quotations from runaways and emancipated men revealing the texture of the slave experience.
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