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Summary
Summary
Two Coretta Scott King Award recipients combine their artistry in an original fable about the People, who--through the power of their storytelling--came to live at peace with Elephant, Shark, and Hawk, rulers of the Earth, the Sea, and the Air. "Myers's fable exalts the role of storytellers, and he tells his own story in a powerful resonant style. Bryan's swirling pictures in bright colors add liveliness . . . [as] he shows the People with a variety of ethnic features and clothing."--C.
1995 "Pick of the Lists" (ABA)
1996 Books for the Teen Age (NY Public Library)
1995 Parent's Choice Silver Honor Award
Author Notes
Walter Dean Myers was born on August 12, 1937 in Martinsberg, West Virginia. When he was three years old, his mother died and his father sent him to live with Herbert and Florence Dean in Harlem, New York. He began writing stories while in his teens. He dropped out of high school and enlisted in the Army at the age of 17. After completing his army service, he took a construction job and continued to write.
He entered and won a 1969 contest sponsored by the Council on Interracial Books for Children, which led to the publication of his first book, Where Does the Day Go? During his lifetime, he wrote more than 100 fiction and nonfiction books for children and young adults. His works include Fallen Angels, Bad Boy, Darius and Twig, Scorpions, Lockdown, Sunrise Over Fallujah, Invasion, Juba!, and On a Clear Day. He also collaborated with his son Christopher, an artist, on a number of picture books for young readers including We Are America: A Tribute from the Heart and Harlem, which received a Caldecott Honor Award, as well as the teen novel Autobiography of My Dead Brother.
He was the winner of the first-ever Michael L. Printz Award for Monster, the first recipient of the Coretta Scott King-Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement, and a recipient of the Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement in writing for young adults. He also won the Coretta Scott King Award for African American authors five times. He died on July 1, 2014, following a brief illness, at the age of 76.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Myers (Brown Angels) and Bryan (Sing to the Sun) make a dynamite team. Here, the hot colors, sweeping lines and stylized figures that characterize Bryan's art form a bold backdrop for the author's equally dramatic original fable. Long ago, Myers writes, the world was divided into three kingdoms: earth, ruled by Elephant; sea, ruled by Shark; and air, ruled by Hawk. The three quarrel mightily as to who is greatest, and they laugh at the People, who, they say, exist only to do their bidding. With time, the People outwit the haughty trio by learning from the stories they tell around the fire at night. The tale of a child catching a butterfly at rest, for instance, sparks a plan to capture Hawk in the baobab tree. In the end, the People realize they have the greatest power of all: "the gift of story and the wisdom it brings." Using repetition and a stately cadence, Myers invests his prose with a timeless air; together, he and Bryan provide for a memorable read-aloud experience. Ages 6-9. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
This original fable tells how the People -- weaker than all the other creatures on earth -- found power in storytelling and the wisdom to share the earth with the three formerly invincible rulers of the forest, sea, and sky -- Elephant, Shark, and Hawk. Myers's language is strong and poetic, and Bryan's luminous paintings, like stained-glass windows, are at once strongly narrative and decorative. From HORN BOOK 1995, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Harmony has little place in Myers's tale of the antediluvian world. Elephant, Shark, and Hawk rule their respective domains of forest, sea, and air with vicious smugness. When People enter the picture, they have nothing but fear for these three kingdoms until the Elephant falls in a pit. Around the campfire, the People devise a way to help, and the grateful beast wants to share his forest. Emboldened by their success, the People then subdue Shark and Hawk with tricks, and demand their right of access. The domination of nature is the heart of this matter; the emphasis is on the evil of the natural world, a threatening place where animals need humiliation meted out by Homo sapiens, and peaceable kingdom be damned. For youngsters, it is a message that sneers in the face of cohabitation, and some of the closing lines of the book--``We do not need to be masters of earth. We can share because it is wise to do so''--feel hollow to the core. Bryan's hyperbright illustrations cannot hold interest in the wake of the overbearing text; the designwork that appears among the pages comes across as unrelated, forgettable bijouterie. (Picture book. 6-9)
Booklist Review
Ages 5-8. Long ago, Elephant ruled the forest kingdom, Shark ruled the sea kingdom, and Hawk ruled the sky kingdom. When new creatures called the People appear, they fear Elephant, Shark, and Hawk, but through their experiences and their storytelling, the People gain mastery over the three kingdoms. Told with dignity, this literary fable celebrates the significance of storytelling as a source of communal experience and wisdom. The artwork features full-page scenes of African people and animals as well as smaller panels of abstract designs. Unusual color combinations and rhythmic compositions give the illustrations a sense of dynamic movement. (Reviewed June 1 & 15, 1995)0060242868Carolyn Phelan