Running The Road To ABC

by Denize Lauture, Reynold Ruffins (Illustrator)

Overview

This buoyant and richly illustrated ABC picture book follows six Haitian children on their way to school—a Coretta Scott King Award winner!

Long before the sun even thinks of rising, the Haitian children run to school—over the hills, through the fields, across the city square. Under the bright morning sun, surrounded by the sounds of nature, the eager students journey through their nation’s hill and meadow regions to learn the letters, sounds, and words of their beautiful books at school.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780689831652
Publisher:	Aladdin
Publication date:	02/01/2000
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	32
Sales rank:	673,600
Product dimensions:	10.00(w) x 10.00(h) x 0.20(d)
Age Range:	5 - 8 Years

About the Author

Denize Lauture was born in Haiti, the first of thirteen children. He emigrated to the United States when he was twenty-two and worked as a welder in Harlem while attending evening classes at the City College of New York, where he earned his bachelor’s in sociology and master’s in bilingual education. He has worked as a professor, consultant on Haitian culture and language, and children’s book writer.

Reynold Ruffins is a graduate of The Cooper Union and a recipient of its most prestigious honor, The Augustus Saint-Gaudens Award for outstanding professional achievement in arts. Ruffins has taught art and design at many different schools and completed commissions for several clients, including IBM, AT&T, Coca-Cola, and The New York Times. Ruffins has illustrated over fifteen children’s books and earned a Coretta Scott King Award for Running the Road to ABC.

Editorial Reviews

Spare, poetic text and folksy gouache illustrations celebrate the joys of learning as a group of Haitian children make their way to school in the pre-dawn hours. Ages 5-8. (Jan.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Gr 1-5The joy of learning shines through in this lyrical, freewheeling tale of a group of Haitian children on their way to school. Leaving at dawn, these barefoot students race through the countryside and town to their school to learn to read and write another letter, sound, word, line, and page in the "great and beautiful books on the Road to ABC." The text flows along with the youngsters, evoking the sounds of the early morning and the shapes of the varied terrain over which they travel. Details of the town with its bread sellers and horse tamers provide another memorable backdrop to the children's passage. This rhythmic, richly descriptive account of a "day in the life" of these young Haitians takes readers into this activity as they follow along. With their vibrant Caribbean colors of turquoise, greens, pinks and oranges, the full- and double-page illustrations are perfectly attuned to the text. Ruffins's folk-art style, including the details of flora and fauna and folks, is a feast for the eyes. The slanting hills and varied perspectives create a sense of movement that keep readers' eyes following the contours of the landscape. An inspirational celebration of reading and the desire to learn.Carol Schene, Taunton Public Schools, MA

School Library Journal

A poetic text charts the experiences of six children as they run through the Haitian countryside ("six days each week, forty weeks each year, for seven years of their short lives") on their way to and from school. Lauture (Father and Son, 1993, etc.) pens a lyric evocation of childhood—or even national—struggle lightened by innocence and leavened by the beauty of the natural world, but it retains a strongly adult sensibility: "On the roads of white turf and roads of red clay they run. On roads of rocks and roads of mud they run. If they take a wrong step they do not complain." The writing often soars (the children "gaze at the heavens, rise before the sun, sail with the moon, and dream of stars to read and write") but many young readers may not sit still for it. Ruffins's bright gouache paintings are appealing; they summon the vitality of Haitian primitive art and are similarly detailed, image-rich and jewel-toned. A book that's worthy, but wanting.

Kirkus Reviews