from Shelf Awareness
Monday is Martin Luther
King Day, and 2013 marks the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for
Jobs and Freedom, where Dr. King delivered his historic "I Have a
Dream" speech. How do we make the impact of his words resonate for young
people?
Kadir Nelson's glorious images in I Have a Dream (Schwartz & Wade/Random
House) accompany the closing passages of Dr. King's speech. These are the most
resonant lines, the ones adults hear in our heads when we think of his words.
Nelson takes Dr. King's refrain and brings it home to children growing up
today. With a portrait of Dr. King's own four children, and with the image for
his dream that "little black boys and black girls will be able to join
hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers" in
what resembles a game of Ring-Around-the-Rosy, Nelson removes any background or
scenery so that the children could be of any time or place. (The book includes
a transcription and recording of the full speech.)
Andrea Davis Pinkney's Hand in Hand:
Ten Black Men Who Changed America, illustrated by Brian
Pinkney, focuses on other courageous men helped Dr. King get to that historic
day, August 28, 1963. They include A. Philip Randolph, one of Pinkney's chosen
10, who organized the march, and who also plays a key role in Tanya Lee Stone's
Courage Has No
Color: The True Story of the Triple Nickles: America's First Black Paratroopers.
Randolph's plans to organize a similar strike in 1941 resulted in President
Franklin Delano Roosevelt signing the Fair Employment Act, without which the
Triple Nickles likely would not have formed.
All three books
demonstrate how many people struggled--and continue to struggle--to realize the
promise of Dr. King's dream. --Jennifer M.
Brown, children's editor, Shelf
Awareness
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