The opening two pages of inspirational quotations from men and women both famous and not-quite serve as a de facto table of contents for a series of collages and accompanying homilies (often quite clunky ones) from the Lees. Read full book review >
The author of accomplished biographies about Mahalia Jackson, Fred and Adele Astaire and others contributes a gem about Fitzgerald's early life in Yonkers and Harlem. Read full book review >
The award-winning mother and her son once again join forces for a picture book. Read full book review >
In this substantive yet never heavy offering, an African-American girl reflects on the people in her family, wondering, after lovingly considering each: "And what will I be, Lord? Read full book review >
Phillis Wheatley was named for the slave ship that brought her to Boston. Read full book review >
Weatherford's compressed poetic homage to Coltrane's early influences relays biographical details through metaphors evoking sound: "Before John was a jazz giant, / he heard Grandpa's Sunday sermons, / Mama playing hymns for the senior choir, / and the scoutmaster's call to join a band." Read full book review >
The syncopated rhythms of bebop form the backbeat to this introduction to Dizzy Gillespie. Read full book review >
Anchored by massive resource lists for adults in tiny type at the back, these 12 thumbnails attempt, not very successfully, to introduce to young or inexpert readers the idea of "multiple intelligences." Read full book review >
A work born out of love for the man and his poetry, this biography-in-verse pays tribute to Juan Francisco Manzano, who lived between 1797 and 1853. Read full book review >
A child's question to his grandma opens a window to another time and place in this intimate, intergenerational conversation. Read full book review >
Taken from a variety of sources, including speeches, letters, essays, and poetry, powerful words of eminent African-Americans tell the history of the struggles to achieve freedom and then equality. Read full book review >
