February is Black History Month. Celebrate by studying the works of writers, artists and poets, whose creations represent the rising pride African-American artists are taking in their past and present.
In the Oct. 10, 1994, Time magazine, Jack White writes: "Never before - not even during the legendary great Harlem renaissance of the 1920s or the bristling black arts movement of the '60s - have black artists produced so much first-rate writing, music, painting and dance. For them, and for their appreciative audience among both blacks and whites, it all amounts to a new cultural renaissance."The effects of the Harlem renaissance and this "new black cultural renaissance," with its blossoming of artistic production, has not only trickled into children's literature but awakened folk tales, and produced more fantasy, realism, poetry and nonfiction than at any other time in history. Visual artists such as Donald Crews, Leo and Diane Dillon, Patrick McKissack, John Steptoe, Tom Feelings, Carole Byard, Brian Pinkney, Pat Cummings and others draw on a primitive folk art as well as modern expressionism and regional techniques to expand children's literature. Past artists, Jacob Lawrence, Joseph Delaney and William Johnson, found in contemporary exhibits and literary works, enhance the portrayal of the "black experience."
Writers and poets like Virginia Hamilton, Mildred Pitts Walter, Walter Dean Myers and many others appear in contemporary literature or, like Langston Hughes, are being reissued.
While the number of publications is still comparatively small, the artistic quality is a cultural phenomena. Writer Walter Dean Myers says it best in "Now Is The Time!" "Like Martin Luther King we have been to the mountain top, glimpsing the full freedom that America has to offer, confident in our path and in our vision. We are a people capable of understanding our own nobility, and our own failures. We have seen who we can be and know that those who have gone before us, who lived their lives well so that we might be free, would demand that we be no less than we can be . . . ."
Some favorite books to read during Black History Month are:
"Come with Me to Africa: American Black Folktales," Virginia Hamilton, illustrated by Leo Dillon and Diane Dillon. (Knopf).
"Sing to The Sun" Poems and full-color pictures by Ashley Bryan. (HarperCollins).
"Cornrows" by Camille Yarbrough, illustrated by Carole Byard. (Putnam).
"The Hundred Penny Box" by Sharon Bell Mathis, illustrated by Leo and Diane Dillon. (Viking).
"The Dream Keeper and Other Poems" Langston Hughes, illustrated by Brian Pinkney. (Knopf).
"One More River to Cross: The Story of Twelve Black Americans" Jim Haskins, illustrated by Floyd Cooper. (Scholastic).
"Soul Looks Back in Wonder" (a collection of poetry) illustrated by Tom Feelings. (Dial).
"Harriet and the Promised Land" Jacob Lawrence (Simon & Schuster).
"The Future Telling Lady and Other Stories" by James Berry (HarperCollins).
"Rosa Parks: My Story" by Rosa Parks and Jim Haskins. (Dial).
"Words by Heart" by Ouida Sebestyen (Bantam).
"Which Way Freedom?" Joyce Hansen (Avon).
"Childtimes: A Three-Generation Memoir" Eloise Greenfield and Lessie Jones Little, illustrated by Jerry Pinkney (HarperCollins).
"All of Us Come Cross the Water" Lucille Clifton, illustrated by John Steptoe (Holt).
"To Be a Slave" by Julius Lester, illustrated by Tom Feelings. (Dial).
"The Friendship: Rolls of Thunder Hear My Cry, Let the Circle Be Unbroken" Mildred Taylor. (Bantam).
"Won't Know Til I Get There" by Walter Dean Myers. (Viking).
"Bigmama's" by Donald Crews. (Greenwillow).
"Letters from a Slave Girl: The Story of Harriet Jacobs" Mary E. Lyons. (Scribner).
"William and the Good Old Days" Eloise Greenfield, illustrated by Jan Spivey Gilchrist. (HarperCollins).
"Tar Beach" by Faith Ringgold (Crown).
"Escape from Slavery: The Boyhood of Frederick Douglass in his Own Words" Edited and illustrated by Michael McCurdy with a foreword by Coretta Scott King (Knopf).
"The Creation: A Poem" by James Weldon Johnson, illustrated by Carla Golembe. (Little, Brown).
"Lift Every Voice and Sing" by James Weldon Johnson, illustrated by Elizabeth Catlett. (Walker).
"AIDA told by Leontyne Price" illustrated by Leo and Diane Dillon. (Harcourt).
"Duke Ellington" by James Lincoln Collier (Macmillan).
"Black Dance in America: A History Through Its People" James Haskins. (HarperCollins).
"Jazz: My Music, My People" Morgan Monceaux (Knopf).
"Alvin Ailey" Andrea Davis Pinkney, illustrated by Brian Pinkney.
"The Orphan Boy" by Tolowa M. Mollel, illustrated by Paul Morin. (Clarion).
"Zora Hurston and the Chinaberry Tree" by William Miller, illustrated by Cornelius Van Wright and Yiang-Hwa Hu. (Lee Low).
"Maya Angelou: Greeting the Morning" Sarah E. King (Millbrook).
"The Glory Field" by Walter Dean Myers (Scholastic).