African American Review articles from March 1998

African American Review archives from March 1998

Making books available: the role of early libraries, librarians, and booksellers in the promotion of African American children's literature.
March 22, 1998... Librarians still have the chance to grow with their libraries, and Negro youth come in closer touch with teachers and librarians who may guide their reading. For the book which has meant something to its reader is never allowed to moulder on the...

Commitment to change: the Council on Interracial Books for Children and the world of children's books.
March 22, 1998... This is a particularly appropriate time at which to reflect on the role of the Council on Interracial Books for Children (CIBC) on its role in the promotion and development of children's literature that would adequately reflect our multi-racial...

The Lonesome Boy theme as emblem for Arna Bontemps's children's literature.
March 22, 1998... In a letter dated March 2, 1955, Langston Hughes wrote his longtime friend Arna Bontemps to congratulate him on the publication of Bontemps's latest children's book: "Lonesome Boy is a perfectly charming and unusual book. I read it right off[;]...

Insiders, outsiders, and the question of authenticity: who shall write for African American children?
March 22, 1998... "Let the Portmans go to Ireland, but as you know nothing of the Manners there, you had better not go with them. You will be in danger of giving false impressions. Stick to Bath & the Foresters. There you will be quite at home." (Jane Austen [from...

John Henry: then and now. (retelling of an African-American folk story)
March 22, 1998... The legend of John Henry has a rich and varied background. More than a century old, it has withstood the test of time as a popular American legend with near-universal appeal. For the last thirty years, however, the John Henry story has been...

"I'm gonna glory in learnin'": academic aspirations of African American characters in children's literature.
March 22, 1998... Scholastic success and failure is a prevalent theme in African American children's literature. African American juvenile fiction is often set in schools, and characters, of both genders and of all ages, express varying views about the value of...

The rhetoric of quilts: creating identity in African-American children's literature.
March 22, 1998... Learning to read and write are two of the greatest accomplishments in the life of a child. The ability to create language, make meaning, and transform reality by the use of symbols provides children creative opportunities to engage the world....

Tracing the trilogy. ('Carolina Trilogy' comprising 'The Secret of Gumbro Grove,' 'Thank You, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.!' and 'A Blessing in Disguise')
March 22, 1998... During the fourth or fifth revision of my children's book The Secret of Gumbo Grove - around 1984 or 1985 - my extraordinarily patient editor Jeanne Vestal at Franklin Watts crossed out yet another passage of my precious prose and tactfully...

African-American children and the case for community: Eleanora Tate's South Carolina trilogy.
March 22, 1998... African-American writers have long recognized that their literary expressions are intimately welded to their history, verbal traditions, and sense of community. Indeed, in postmodern culture, as critic Nancy Peterson has demonstrated, engaging...

Reading in color: children's book illustrations and identity formation for black children in the United States.
March 22, 1998... In her Coretta Scott King Award acceptance speech, Virginia Hamilton said, "Literature gives us images with which to think" (684). This is literally true for the illustrations which accompany much of children's literature. In these post-modem...

Donald Crews: the signs and times of an American childhood - essay and interview.(Interview)
March 22, 1998... The work of picture-book artist Donald Crews is striking in its sharp-edged images of urban life, especially transportation. Informed by his graphics training and experience, he emphasizes picture over story and presents the hand of people upon...

Tom Feelings: a Black Arts Movement. (African-American illustrator)
March 22, 1998... When I was eight years old, my Aunt Jean gave me a book that she had hoped would end my fixation on Christopher Robin. I looked at it and was genuinely thrilled to see faces that looked like mine. However, hours later, Christopher Robin, Pooh,...

"Keepin' it real": Walter Dean Myers and the promise of African-American children's literature.
March 22, 1998... Let us hear the questions in their hearts and let us hear them with our hearts Let us celebrate the children (Myers, Glorious Angels, n.p.) One afternoon not long ago, I spent over three hours with a group of diverse colleagues deliberating...

Evoking the "holy and the horrible": conversations with Joyce Carol Thomas. (novelist, playwright and poet)(Interview)
March 22, 1998... Joyce Carol Thomas is a poet, novelist, and playwright. Through these three modes of perceiving the world - the poet's spare, sharp-edged wonder; the playwright's cunning orchestration of incident and character; and the novelist's urge to bring...

"I double never ever never lie to my chil'ren": inside people in Virginia Hamilton's narratives.
March 22, 1998... Virginia Hamilton is the most important author currently writing for children in the United States.(1) The point is perhaps an arguable one, but I think few critics of children's literature would deny Hamilton's significance as an international...

Them Dark Days: Slavery in the American Swamps.
March 22, 1998... Reviewed by Eugene D. Genovese Atlanta, Georgia In Them Dark Days, William Dusinberre, a superior historical craftsman, provides a deeply researched, acutely analyzed, powerfully written study of the antebellum plantations on the rice coast...

"Who Set You Flowin'?: The African-American Migration Narrative.
March 22, 1998... Reviewed by Charles Scruggs University of Arizona The quotation in the title of Griffin's book comes from "Seventh Street" in Jean Toomer's Cane and refers to the Great Migration of African Americans to Northern cities in the twentieth...

Flying Home and Other Stories.
March 22, 1998... Reviewed by Robert J. Butler Canisius College Scholars and teachers have eagerly awaited the publication of a book of this kind for many years. For a variety of reasons which are still difficult to understand fully, Ralph Ellison's short...

The First Woman in the Republic: A Cultural Biography of Lydia Maria Child.
March 22, 1998... Reviewed by Annette Kolodny University of Arizona Like a silent undertow, anxiety about race and racial mixing tugs at the narratives of most nineteenth-century canonical American writers, even when it seems not to be their subject. In 1826,...

The Tan Chanteuse.(Children's Review)
March 22, 1998... Reviewed by Heather Ross Miller Washington and Lee University Carole Boston Weatherford, an energetic and musical poet, bold and honest in approach, is nevertheless not the sort of noisy reveler we associate with a loud jamboree. But both...