Homegrown House - Janet S. Wong

Illustrated by E. B. Lewis
Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2009
$16.99
for Kids
Rating: 3
Endpapers: Alternating squares that look like old-fashioned wallpaper, perhaps.

E. B. Lewis' watercolors are sumptious, as always. He does amazing things with shadows! He captures people perfectly - there's even one page that has its perspective from high up - not quite birds-eye view, but almost (the girls and her grandmother are looking down at the floor).

This is a story of the relationship between a girl and her grandmother. It's also the story of a girl wanting to stay in one house for more than a short amount of time, as her grandmother has. Some of the story is lovely - it's written in freeform verse and flows in a gentle way. The reason I can't give it a higher rating is because I think, although the essence of the story comes through clearly, there are some places that I can't tell whether it's talking about her grandmother's house, her new house, or her hopeful, future new home. It's probably me and the frame of mind I'm in right now, but I've gone back twice and I think it's now clear - it would probably be more clear for a kid withouth the extra-aged brain cells.

I Want to Be Free - Joseph Slate

Illustrator: E. B. Lewis
For: Kids - School age
Published: 2009
Rating: 4.5
Read: 1/31/09 B&N
Endpapers: Med. Sage Blue

In rhyming couplets we accompany a slave - who is able to remove the chain from his leg, but not the clamp from his ankle - to his freedom. Along the way he encounters a motherless child who is being left behind for slave-hunters to find, so he takes it upon himself to take the young boy with him. Then he forages for two...to the Land of the Free. There, the child touches the ring on his ankle and it falls away. This is when it gets weirdly religious - "How, dear child, did you set me free?/ I'm from the Lord. You cared for me."

Hmmm. Then I turned the page and got my explanation for this curious ending: AUTHOR'S NOTE: "This poem is a retelling of a story in the sacred literature of Buddha about his disciple, the Elephant Ananda, as related by Rudyard Kipling in his novel, Kim. I moved its setting and language to anther time, as I believe its them to be universal." Okay, that explains that. Maybe its time for me to investigat Buddha a little, 'cause I have no idea about this Elephant Ananda......intriguing.....

I just read The Negro Speaks of Rivers, also illustrated by E. B. Lewis. Wow. His dark, full page illustrations are emotional and inspiring.

The Negro Speaks of Rivers - Langston Hughes

Illustrator: E. B. Lewis
For: Absolutely everyone!
Published: Jan. 2009
Rating 5
Read: Jan, 2009 (Library book)
Endpapers: Bright mustard
"Dedicated to the heroes of the civil rights movement - E.B.L."

My first 2009 copyrighted picture book - and it's a winner. Langston Hughes wrote this poem in 1920, when he was 18, and the watercolor illustrations that E. B. Lewis has created make me want to cry, they're so beautiful. One line per double-page spread - and each one is a breath-taking painting on its own.

The Negro Speaks of Rivers

I've known rivers:
I've know rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of
.....human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.

I looked up the Nile and raised pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans,
.....and I've seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

---Langston Hughes