Bronzeville Boys and Girls

by Gwendolyn Brooks, Faith Ringgold (Illustrator)

Overview

This classic picture book from Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Gwendolyn Brooks, paired with full-color illustrations by Caldecott Honor artist Faith Ringgold, explores the lives and dreams of the children who live together in an urban neighborhood. In 1956, Gwendolyn Brooks created thirty-four poems that celebrated the joy, beauty, imagination, and freedom of childhood. Bronzeville Boys and Girls features these timeless poems, which remind us that whether we live in the Bronzeville section of Chicago or any other neighborhood, childhood is universal in its richness of emotions and new experiences.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780060295059
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	12/26/2006
Edition description:	Reprinted Edition
Pages:	48
Sales rank:	1,099,209
Product dimensions:	9.00(w) x 11.00(h) x 0.25(d)
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Gwendolyn Brooks (1917—2000) is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Annie Allen and one of the most celebrated Black poets. She also served as consultant in poetry to the Library of Congress—the first Black woman to hold that position. She was the poet laureate for the state of Illinois for over thirty years, a National Women’s Hall of Fame inductee, and the recipient of a lifetime achievement award from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her works include We Are Shining, Bronzeville Boys and Girls, A Street in Bronzeville, In the Mecca, The Bean Eaters, and Maud Martha. You can find out more about her at www.gwendolynbrooks.net.

An award-winning artist internationally renowned for her painted story quilts, Faith Ringgold is also the author of thirteen children's picture books, including the 1992 Caldecott Honor Award-winning Tar Beach. Her artwork is in the permanent collections of many museums, including the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum of Modern Art. She also has had exhibitions in major museums in the United States, Europe, South America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. She lives in Englewood, New Jersey, with her husband.

Editorial Reviews

Brooks's deceptively simple poems for children combined with Ringgold's vibrant illustrations help to rejuvenate this collection first published in 1956. Inspired by Brooks's Chicago neighborhood, the events, feelings and thoughts of the children in the verse take on a timeless quality. The language and tone appear to be casual, but each poem is tightly constructed, rhythmic and distinctive. Whether the poem takes a child as its subject or unfolds in a child's voice, the images are universal. A new puppy has a "little wiggly warmness" and will not "mock the tears you have to hide." The snow is "white as milk or shirts./ So beautiful it hurts." Brooks's language remains economical yet astonishingly inventive. She describes how "Maurice importantly/ peacocksup and down./ Till bigly it occurs to him/ (It hits him like a slam)" that he won't be able to pack up his friends and take them along when he moves to another town. A few of the poems seem dated (kids call their mothers "Mother-dear," and when Paulette wants to run, her mother says "You're eight, and ready/ To be a lady") but on the whole, the collection will be as appealing to today's readers as it was to a child of the 1950s. Ringgold's bold illustrations, outlined with her signature thick black lines, are among some of her best and most narrative works since Tar Beach. She moves easily from cityscapes to cozy interior scenes around the family dinner table or singing at church. Ages 7-10. (Jan.)

Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

K-Gr 4
The Pulitzer Prize-winning poet first published this collection of 34 brief poems in 1956. Each one presents a different child involved in a pastime that still figures in the lives of contemporary children. Mexie and Bridie are enjoying a tea party, small Narcissa is sitting still while her imagination transforms her into an ancient queen, and Michael hopes no one will notice that he holds his mother's hand during a thunderstorm. Some of the selections, such as "Robert," are reflective: "Do you ever look in the looking-glass/And see a stranger there?/A child you know and do not know,/Wearing what you wear?" Others, such as "Otto," offer a bit of social commentary:" It's Christmas Day. I did not get/The presents that I hoped for. Yet,/It is not nice to frown or fret./To frown or fret would not be fair./My Dad must never know I care/It's hard enough for him to bear." The original illustrations were black-and-white line drawings, done by Ronni Solbert, and despite the fact that the Bronzeville area of Chicago was also known as the Black Metropolis, featured white children. Ringgold's trademark, vibrantly colored, stylized art features children of color. This book is an excellent opportunity to introduce the work of an important author to a new generation. It should be considered a first purchase for most libraries.
—Grace OliffCopyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

School Library Journal

Brooks's gloriously universal celebration of African-American childhood here receives a respectful and joyous treatment from one of the pre-eminent illustrators of the same. Readers coming to "Narcissa," "Beulah at Church" and "Marie Lucille" for the first time will discover them accompanied by Ringgold's trademark folk-art interpretations, the expressive brown figures depicted for the most part as vignettes against bright backgrounds. They show a Bronzeville that bustles with activity, single-family homes sharing the streets with apartment buildings and the occasional vacant lot. The children run, braids and arms out straight, and contemplate in turns, their exuberance tempered by the solemnity of childhood. While it's regrettable that occasionally the specificity of the illustration robs a verse of its universality-the "special place" referenced in "Keziah" is shown to be underneath the kitchen table, for instance-the overall ebullience of the images more than compensates. There is a drop of truth in every single playful, piercing stanza, and anything that brings these poems to a new audience is to be cheered; a lovely package indeed. (Picture book/poetry. 7+)

Kirkus Reviews