PICTURE BOOK - Giant Steps to Change the World - Spike Lee & Tonya Lewis Lee

Illustrated by Sean Qualls

2011, Madstone: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers 

32 pages

Goodreads rating: 3.93

My rating: 3

Endpapers: pink background, with 12 different quotes in 12 differently-colored and shaped quadrilaterals

Illustrations:  I liked some of them a lot, but others didn't do anything at all to inspire me...

My comments:  I hunted for this book in anticipation of using it during one of my Owning Up/Character education lessons each week.  Unfortunately, it's not going to work for that.  The ideas put forth are wonderful but....vague.  Each set of pages referred to someone special in the history of the world.  Granted, there were quotes from each of them on the endpapers, but an addendum at the end of the book - or even a separate space on each page - would have been informative and helpful.
     Perhaps researching, or even discussing, the people ahead of time....or finding picture books about some of them...this would be the good ENDING to a mini-unit, but does not stand up well on its own.

Mohammad Ali
Harriet Tubman
Jesse Owen
Ben Carson
Marva Collins
Albert Einstein
Langston HughesJean-Michel Basquait
Barack Obama
the Tuskegee Airmen
Neil Armstrong
Mother Teresa

Goodreads:  "On some days your dreams may seem too away far to realize… Listen to the whispers of those that came before..." 
          Following the success of their much beloved picture books, Please, Baby, Please and Please, Puppy, Please; Academy Award nominated director Spike Lee, and his talented wife Tonya Lewis Lee offer up an inspirational picture book about activism and taking the big steps to set things right set to beautiful illustrations by the award-winning Sean Qualls. Using examples of people throughout history who have taken "giant steps", this book urges kids to follow in their footsteps and not be hindered by fear or a sense that you are not good enough. Despite the challenges, even the smallest step can change the world. So, what's your next step going to be?

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