Pinkney, Jerry Books - Page 3

Sam and the Tigers: A Retelling of 'Little Black Sambo' (Picture Puffins)

Julius Lester

Amazon Price: $6.99 List Price: $6.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Puffin Amazon Marketplace: 40 new & used starting at $0.03

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Children's Books -> Ages 4-8 -> General
Subjects -> Children's Books -> Ages 4-8 -> General AAS
Subjects -> Children's Books -> Animals -> Lions, Tigers & Leopards -> Fiction

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 23 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Once upon a time there was a place called Sam-sam-sa-mara, where the animals and the people lived and worked together like they didn't know they weren't supposed to. There was a little boy in Sam-sam-sa-mara named Sam....

So begins this delightful telling of one of the most controversial books in children's literature, Little Black Sambo. Julius Lester and Jerry Pinkney reveal at the heart of this story a lively and charming tale of a little boy who triumphs over several hungry tigers.

"Lester and Pinkney have stripped away the ugly racism and...reclaimed a great classic for children. [The] expansive black storytelling voice is both folksy and contemporary, funny and fearful." --Booklist

"Lester's wit...makes the story fresh and funny; Pinkney's watercolors have vitality and, in the tigers, magnificence." --The Horn Book

Awards:
( An ALA Notable Book
( An NCSS-CBC Notable Children's Trade Book in the Field of Social Studies
( An American Bookseller "Pick of the Lists"

Childtimes: A Three-Generation Memoir

Eloise Greenfield, Lessie Jones Little

Amazon Price: $9.99 List Price: $9.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: HarperCollins Amazon Marketplace: 61 new & used starting at $2.00

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Children's Books -> Ages 4-8 -> General
Subjects -> Children's Books -> Ages 4-8 -> General AAS
Subjects -> Children's Books -> Ages 9-12 -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

This book is outstanding!! 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 5 people found this review helpful.

I love Childtimes by Eloise Greenfield. I read Childtimes as a fifth grader. It was a wonderful book that should be read by all--young and old.

this book was about the life of Eloise Greenfield. 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 9 people found this review helpful.

it was a very good book. I recomend it to every one

Editorial Review:

Eloise Greenfield‘Three [African-American] women—grandmother, mother, daughter—recall significant aspects of their respective childhoods [from the 1800s through the 1950s].The effect is poignant and moving [as familiar patterns develop]: household chores, school life and socials, encounters with prejudice, love of family, pride of heritage.’ —H.

Notable 1979 Children’s Trade Books in Social Studies (NCSS/CBC)
1980 Carter G. Woodson Outstanding Merit Book (NCSS)
1979 Children's Book Show (American Institute of Graphic Arts)
Children's Books of 1979 (Library of Congress)

The Adventures of Spider: West African Folktales (BookFestival)

Joyce Cooper Arkhurst

Amazon Price: $8.99 List Price: $8.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Little, Brown Young Readers Amazon Marketplace: 46 new & used starting at $3.06

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Children's Books -> Ages 4-8 -> General
Subjects -> Children's Books -> Ages 4-8 -> General AAS
Subjects -> Children's Books -> Animals -> Bugs & Spiders -> Staff Picks

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

This is a great book for children and adult storytellers 5 out of 5 stars.
28 of 28 people found this review helpful.

The author has presented a simple, easy to read format which will be easy for children to read, understand, and most important, ENJOY! The humor is wonderful. The main character, Spider, will be easily recognizable to those children already familiar with the Anansi stories. Additionally, I am a teacher and have introduced oral storytelling into my second grade classroom. These stories are simple, rich and easy to learn for those who may be interested in becoming a storyteller themselves! It's a thoroughly enjoyable and wonderful book.

Absolutely amazing! 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

I'd agree with the previous reviewer; however, the author (Joyce Cooper Arkhurst) was indeed the person responsible for popularizing the Anansi stories here in the USA! The vocabulary in the book introduces kids to Africa and West African terms and culture. Joyce was a storyteller at the New York City Public Library many years ago and received a grant to go to West Africa to research the rich oral tradition of storytelling in the villages. This book was the first to popularize the Anansi stories and opened the door for McDermott and others. Enjoy!

Editorial Review:

Presents six tales about Spider, including those which explain how he got a thin waist and a bald head and why he lives in ceilings and dark corners.

Home Place

Crescent Dragonwagon

Amazon Price: $7.99 List Price: $7.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Aladdin Amazon Marketplace: 41 new & used starting at $1.94

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Children's Books -> Ages 4-8 -> General
Subjects -> Children's Books -> Ages 4-8 -> General AAS
Subjects -> Children's Books -> Authors & Illustrators, A-Z -> ( P ) -> Pinkney, Jerry

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Hauntingly beautiful, evocative; to read again and again 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 4 people found this review helpful.

A family wandering in the woods finds an old abandoned home place and wonders who lived there. Gradually, the past and present merge and separate --- the black family who homesteaded, dreamed their own dreams, lived, cooked, did chores comes to life briefly, then recedes. But "They were here... for every year the daffodils come up / to trumpet the good news of spring / forever and forever." With a strong and mysterious sense of time and timelessness, memory and imagination, the author's quietly spare words and the illustrator's sumptous, moving pictures move together seamlessly. I have used this in my class (it is one of the books which can kindle endless discussion and serve as an easy, natural springboard for student writing), read it to my own children countless times, and bought it as a gift for friends of all ages. Anyone who has a "home place" in their past; indeed anyone who wonders about what lasts and what falls away, will respond to this moving, lovely book.

Editorial Review:

Deep in the woods there used to be a house where a family once lived. Over there was the chimney. Just imagine little toes warming up beside it. And see those daffodils? Someone took special care to plant and tend to them so that every spring they blossomed as brightly as the year before.

Both the house and the family are gone now, but if you go to that spot in the woods, you'll find the chimney and the flowers. Then all you have to do is close your eyes and imagine...With Crescent Dragonwagon's poetic text and Jerry Pinkney's rich watercolors, past and present briefly touch in this remarkable book.

Rabbit Makes a Monkey of Lion (Picture Puffins)

Verna Aardema, Jerry Pinkney

Amazon Price: $6.99 List Price: $6.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Puffin Amazon Marketplace: 40 new & used starting at $0.03

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Children's Books -> Ages 4-8 -> General
Subjects -> Children's Books -> Ages 4-8 -> General AAS
Subjects -> Children's Books -> Authors & Illustrators, A-Z -> ( P ) -> Pinkney, Jerry

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

The clever rabbit 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Title: Rabbit makes a Monkey of Lion
Author: Verna Aardema
Favorite Characters: Rabbit, Turtle, honey guide

Rabbit and Bush-rat are leaded to some honey up in a calabash tree by a honey guide one morning. While they began eating honey the Lion came and said that it was his honey. He vowed that he would eat whoever was up in the tree. The Rabbit tricked the lion into chasing him away from the tree and the Bush-rat escaped. The next morning Rabbit and Turtle went for the honey and once again the lion came. The Rabbit tricked the Lion again and the Turtle also tricked the lion.
The Lion soon realized that the Rabbit was behind all this trickery. Therefore, the Lion waited at the Rabbit�s house where he would eat the Rabbit as soon as he returns. In the end, the Lion fools himself and you�ll have to find out how by reading this book....

Editorial Review:

Keeping her tummy full of honey is what Rabbit has in mind. But Lion protests. That honey comes from his calabash tree. "I'm going to eat you!" he roars. But Rabbit and her friends are determined to outwit the mighty dimwit. "Pinkney's soft-line drawings . . . capture the drama of the tale."--Booklist. Full color.

Drylongso

Virginia Hamilton

Amazon Price: $8.50 List Price: $10.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Sandpiper Amazon Marketplace: 42 new & used starting at $0.01

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Children's Books -> Ages 9-12 -> General
Subjects -> Children's Books -> Ages 9-12 -> General AAS
Subjects -> Children's Books -> Authors & Illustrators, A-Z -> ( H ) -> Hamilton, Virginia

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Drylongso 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 6 people found this review helpful.

This book is great! I've read it 4 times and recommended to everyone that loves children's books. It brought back childhood memories of the big dust storms we once had. The writing of Virginia Hamilton, as always, is superb. The characters were real to me and the illustration allowed each character to dance through out the story. I loved Lindy's character. I've recommanded the book to others because of it's down to earth discription of how things were. I remember playing in gullies like the one the garden was planted in. Each of us have out childhood memories. We lived in the dry dusty country of West Texas. Thank you for the opprotunity of being able to tell others how much I loved this book. The reason I found this is because I wanted to buy one to show my grandchildren how it was in the dust bowl days.

Editorial Review:

Lindy and her family are suffering through a long drought. Then the mystical Drylongso teaches them the secrets of finding water hidden in the earth. “Drylongso is a hypnotic, joyful story from a distinguished writer--one that, with the help of Jerry Pinkney’s beautiful watercolor and pastel pictures, depicts well the dry land, the swirling wind and earth, and an African-American family planting in hope with the help of a wondrous, dusty, divining stickfella.”--The New York Times Book Review

I Want to Be (Picture Puffins)

Thylias Moss

List Price: $5.99 By: Puffin Amazon Marketplace: 5 new & used starting at $16.75

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Children's Books -> Ages 4-8 -> Picture Books
Subjects -> Children's Books -> Ages 4-8 -> General
Subjects -> Children's Books -> Ages 4-8 -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

A Touching Story for Children of all Ages 5 out of 5 stars.
7 of 7 people found this review helpful.

Have you ever read a children's book, and wondered, "Wow, I wish that I would have read this when I was a child?" That is exactly how I felt after reading "I Want to Be." The book had a similar impact on my students. My first grade class asks me to read this book all of the time! "I Want to Be" has inspired the students to write about "what they want to be." This book does a wonderful job of allowing children to express their creativity, yet very realistically. This is a fascinating story with beautiful illustrations. The narrator, a young child, states, "I want to be pretty, but not so pretty...." and, "I want to be tall, but not too tall..." Children love reading books that can relate directly to their lives and dreams.

Editorial Review:

What do you want to be? a young girl is asked. Her answer is full of the soaring imagination and daring of youth: I want to be in motion but I want the ants in my pants to sometimes take a vacation. Sometimes I want to be slow but not so slow that everything passes me by. Poet Thylias Moss's extraordinary images are brought to life with Jerry Pinkney's equally extraordinary illustrations. Exhilirating, verbally and visually; the very essence of youthful energy and summertime freedom. --Kirkus Reviews

The Old African

Julius Lester

Amazon Price: $15.59 List Price: $19.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Dial Amazon Marketplace: 48 new & used starting at $1.73

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Children's Books -> Ages 9-12 -> General
Subjects -> Children's Books -> Ages 9-12 -> General AAS
Subjects -> Children's Books -> Authors & Illustrators, A-Z -> ( L ) -> Lester, Julius

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Richie's Picks: THE OLD AFRICAN 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 7 people found this review helpful.

The title page of THE OLD AFRICAN is preceded by the pictorial story of the hunt and capture of the runaway called "Paul."

"The boy's wrists were tied so that his arms hugged the trunk of the large oak tree. His face was pressed against it as if it were the bosom of the mother he had never known. His back glistened with blood.
"Whack!"
"The whip cut into his flesh again, but he did not scream or even whimper.
"Master Riley had ordered his twenty slaves to watch what happened to someone who dared run away, and like a black crescent moon, they stood in a semicircle near the tree. At the center was the Old African. His face was as expressionless as tree bark.
"The slaves did not see the blood on the boy's back nor hear the flies droning around the red gaping wounds. They were staring at a picture in their minds, a picture of water as soft and cool as a lullaby. They did not know how the Old African was able to make them see water as blue as freedom, but he had done it to them often."

"Sometimes I feel
Like a motherless child
Sometimes I feel
Like a motherless child
A long way
From my home, yeah
Yeah
Sing
Freedom
Freedom
Freedom"
--Richie Havens' rewrite of "Motherless Child"

I got to attend a Richie Havens performance thirty-five years ago, in 1970. For many of today's young adults, 1970 is ancient history. For me, 1970 was high school and girls and protesting Vietnam, Workingman's Dead, and the first Earth Day. I learned to drive in 1970. The thirty-five years that have passed since then is the same interval of time that separated women getting the right to vote and me getting born. The Nineteenth Amendment once felt like ancient textbook history to me. Not anymore.

"It happened so quickly. One minute he had been asleep, one arm across Ola's back. The next there were screams and yells and shouts, and then men bursting into his home and grabbing him and Ola, tying their hands behind their backs and pushing them outside.
"Quickly he was separated from Ola. A rope was tied around his waist and then tied to the bound wrists of a man in front of him as his own bound wrists were tied to a rope around the waist of the man behind him."

Textbooks and run-of-the-mill history lessons can so easily make the kidnapping, torture, and enslavement of Africans seem like something two-dimensional that happened in history just this side of Columbus discovering the world was round. In contrast, the raw emotion of Julius Lester's text and of Jerry Pinkney's visual artistry in THE OLD AFRICAN give the slave's journey an immediacy that no textbook could ever match.

In a work of imagination based upon a true story, THE OLD AFRICAN tells the tale of the slave once known as Jaja, God's gift, who is silent but who has The Power. Jaja, now known as the Old African, recalls his capture, his being traded to the "Mwene Puto, the Lord of the Dead, who was the color of bones," and his subsequent journey across the Water-That-Stretched-Forever, to America.

"The bottom of the ship was three tiers of wide wooden bunks, three feet between each one. The captives were made to lie on their right sides, their bodies curled against each other like spoons resting in a drawer. Jaja could feel the head of the man behind lying on his back, the man's knees resting in the crooks of Jaja's knees just as Jaja's head lay on the back of the man in front of him, his knees and thighs tucked in the crook of the other man's legs.
"Jaja lay in the middle tier, which he found out quickly was the worst place to be. Even though there were round windows that brought in air from the water, and open hatches in the ceiling let in more air, it was not enough for the almost 250 men, women, and children who lay as tightly against each other as feathers on a bird's wings.
"Almost immediately Jaja was covered with sweat, as was the man who lay against him, as was the man he lay against, as were the bodies of every man, woman, and child lying there. The smell of perspiration was too thick for the wisps of air coming in from the water to move against. Someone gagged at the odor and vomited. Then another. And another. And another."

Now I have a clear vision of what it was to be captive aboard a slave ship.

"Sitting here in Limbo
Waiting for the tide to flow
Yeah, now, sitting here in Limbo
And I know in my heart that it's time for me to go
Well they're putting up resistance
But I know that my faith will lead me on"
--Jimmy Cliff

While tending to that runaway, captured, and whipped slave known as "Paul," the Old African learns that Paul has seen the ocean and determines that he, the Old African, will deliver his people back to their homeland in Africa.

"Oh the water,
Let it run all over me."
--Van Morrison (1970) "And it Stoned Me"

In-depth notes from the author and illustrator at the conclusion of the book include discussion of Ybo Landing "where, it was believed, a group of Ybo slaves had walked into the water, saying they were going to walk back to Africa."

The thirty-two paintings that Jerry Pinkney created for this book ooze with emotion. The scenes aboard the slave ship have a hellish quality to them, the white people appearing ghostlike and the captives appearing as masses of lost souls. The scenes of the deliverance back to Africa have an overwhelming sense of joy and rebirth.

Like some veteran musical duo who can anticipate exactly where the other is headed, Julius Lester and Jerry Pinkney work together here to create sheer magic. THE OLD AFRICAN is one hell of a performance.

Editorial Review:

No one on the plantation had ever heard the Old African’s voice, yet he had spoken to all of them in their minds. For the Old African had the power to see the color of a person’s soul and read his thoughts as if they were words on a page. Now it was time to act—time to lead his fellow slaves to the Water-That-Stretched-Forever, and from there back to Africa. Back to their home.

Based on legend and infused with magical realism, this haunting tale is beautiful in both its language and its images. Julius Lester and Jerry Pinkney have found a new, extraordinary way to express the horrors of slavery and the hope and strength that managed to overcome its grip.

David's Songs: His Psalms and Their Story

List Price: $17.00 By: Dial Amazon Marketplace: 18 new & used starting at $0.50

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Children's Books -> Ages 4-8 -> General
Subjects -> Children's Books -> Ages 4-8 -> General AAS
Subjects -> Children's Books -> Ages 9-12 -> General

Editorial Review:

The songs of David, the young shepherd who became the king of Israel, have endured for over 2,000 years in the Psalms of the Old Testament. Now, the distinguished art historian Colin Eisler selects and introduces 42 psalms, while two-time Caldecott Honor artist Jerry Pinkney depicts the ancient scenes in stunning watercolor paintings. Size C. CC

Black Cowboy, Wild Horses

Julius Lester

Amazon Price: $14.81 List Price: $18.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Dial Amazon Marketplace: 50 new & used starting at $5.61

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Children's Books -> Ages 9-12 -> General
Subjects -> Children's Books -> Ages 9-12 -> General AAS
Subjects -> Children's Books -> Animals -> Horses -> Fiction

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Multiethnic Biographical Picture Book 5 out of 5 stars.
10 of 11 people found this review helpful.

This book is based on a true story about Bob Lemmons, a African American Cowboy. The pictures are outstanding representations of the story. It is a tale of a cowboy and his ability to ride with wild horses. He has the ability to lead the horses into thinking that he is one of them. Yes, a wild horse! This book could be used as an introduction to biographies or cowboys for young people. I would read it to 5-10 year old children. It is wonderfully written and would be a asset to any school or public library.

Sadly can't recommend this book 2 out of 5 stars.
7 of 10 people found this review helpful.

Although the writing is not very good it makes up for it by having a story that goes nowhere and has no real ending. Being a mother of two black boys I am alway looking for books that have black charactors in them--so I was quite pleased to buy a black cowboy book for them. This books disappoints in almost everyway. The purple prose is so overwrought that you feel as though you are reading a new line of pulp romances for children. The story involves an ex-slave enslaving wild horses while wishing he himself could leave this life and let his horse ride free into the distant horizon. In the midst of the book we are introduced to a lively wild colt only to have this colt immmediatly bit by a snake and die. It is this tragity that unsettles the herd of horses so that the mounted cowboy can take over as alpha horse and lead them to a waiting corral to be broken by the cheering white cowboys to whom he never speaks.
On the plus side the illustration's muddly watercolors are pleasing to the eye.

Editorial Review:

Based on true accounts by Bob Lemmons, a former slave, "Black Cowboy, Wild Horses" chronicles Lemmons' adventures as he tracks wild horses across the plains. Full color.