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Summary
Summary
Gracefully told by Newbery Medalist Virginia Hamilton, this collection of 19 stories focuses on the magical lore and wondrous imaginings of Black women. Vibrant paintings by Caldecott Medallists Leo and Diane Dillon glow with the drama and mystery of each tale while reflecting the warmth and beauty of the people who first told them.
Author Notes
Virginia Hamilton was born March 12, 1934. She received a scholarship to Antioch College, and then transferred to the Ohio State University in Columbus, where she majored in literature and creative writing. She also studied fiction writing at the New School for Social Research in New York.
Her first children's book, Zeely, was published in 1967 and won the Nancy Bloch Award. During her lifetime, she wrote over 40 books including The People Could Fly, The Planet of Junior Brown, Bluish, Cousins, the Dies Drear Chronicles, Time Pieces, Bruh Rabbit and the Tar Baby Girl, and Wee Winnie Witch's Skinny. She was the first African American woman to win the Newbery Award, for M. C. Higgins, the Great. She has won numerous awards including three Newbery Honors, three Coretta Scott King Awards, an Edgar Allan Poe Award, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award, and the Hans Christian Andersen Award. She was also the first children's author to receive a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant in 1995.
She died from breast cancer on February 19, 2002 at the age of 67.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 4 UpOutstanding interpreters of, and contributors to, black culture for children, Virginia Hamilton and the Dillons have produced yet another superb offering, of value to all ages and segments of our society. Her Stories contains 20 brief pieces, equally (if sometimes rather abitrarily) distributed in 5 sections: animal tales, fairy tales, supernatural stories, ``folkways and legends,'' and true tales (including Hamilton's own account of this book's genesis). Vernacular rather than dialectal, the fluid writing recalls the oral sources of these tales (there is a source bibliography, and comments on provenance follow each tale). As the title implies, the stories all feature females, but there is nothing predictable about the roles they play. Funny, touching, scary, magical, and inspiring by turns, the characters are as varied as the narrativesand as the tastes of readers. The Dillons' electric-hued acrylic paintings (16 full-page, several vignettes, and an enticing jacket) catch the tales' multiple moods. The book is a gallery of beautiful women of color. Entrancing and important, this notable collaboration deserves a wide success.Patricia (Dooley) Lothrop Green, St. George's School, Newport, RI (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
The distinguished creators of The People Could Fly and Many Thousand Gone return for this striking collection of 17 tales, each featuring an African American woman or girl as the main character. True stories, ghost stories, folk legends, classic fairy tales, tall tales and more indicate the breadth of African American cultural traditions. Retold from a variety of sources, the stories flow smoothly in Hamilton's expertly measured prose. The full-color illustrations, one per story, are lush and detailed, like the Dillons' work in Pish, Posh, Said Hieronymus Bosch. In a handsome oversize format, the book itself reflects unusually high production values. Text and art are laid against a buff background in a sophisticated but uncrowded page design, and the volume is bound with an unusually heavy casing. It will need that sturdiness, for these are tales to be read over and over again. Ages 6-up. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
(Younger) Illustrated by María Cristina Brusca. Pedro Urdemales is a clever trickster who appears in tales throughout Latin America. Brusca and Wilson retell twelve of those stories in this humorous, lively collection about a character who would feel right at home with Brer Rabbit and Coyote. In each of the stories Pedro outwits others who are richer, greedier, or more foolish than he is. In one tale Pedro sells a bush on which he has hung several gold pieces for five thousand pesos, claiming it is a money tree. In another, he paints black and brown spots on several horses and brazenly sells them to the priest who owns them. Young readers will join right in as Pedro laughs at the wealthy, educated class he so easily dupes. The stories, most of which are just two or three pages long, are illustrated with Brusca's sharp black-and-white line drawings that support the biting humor of the stories. The book - with its mischievous hero, its attractive, open layout, and its brief stories - is accessible to young readers. Brusca and Wilson include a thorough introduction and source notes to authenticate this welcome and entertaining collection. m.v.k. LisaÿCampbell Ernst, Reteller-Illustrator Little Red Riding Hood: A Newfangled Prairie Tale (Picture Book) Little Red Riding Hood wears a hooded sweatshirt and rides her bicycle through farm fields to deliver muffins and lemonade to her grandmother in this cheerful contemporary rendering of the old tale. In Ernst's version the wolf makes a mistaken assumption: the grandmother does not turn out to be the "frail, loony, muffin-baking granny" he is expecting. In fact, she is a robust farmer who turns the tables on the wolf: "The wolf's mouth dropped open and he began to shake. 'M-m-my,' he finally whispered. 'What big eyes you have, Grandma.'" As in her earlier books, Ernst demonstrates her mastery over the picture-book form, with inventive plot and enjoyable characters succinctly drawn in the narrative and beautifully extended in the illustrations. Her familiar cartoon-style drawings, colored here in soft shades of red, blue, brown, and green, fill the pages. This playful send-up will please individual readers and story-hour audiences right down to the business partnership of Granny and the wolf and the concluding muffin recipe. m.a.b. (Picture Book) Retold and illustrated by Uri Shulevitz. Although no particular source is cited, the story of the simpleton whose kindness eventually wins him a princess bride has been commonly ascribed to the Brothers Grimm. The plot is immediately set in motion as, one by one, a peasant's three sons set forth to chop wood. Only the third, the simpleton, responds with kindness to a mysterious old man who begs for food; he is rewarded with the gift of a golden goose. The gleaming bird attracts the attention of a motley crew, including the daughters of the innkeeper in whose hostel the simpleton spends the night. Hoping only for a single feather, each finds herself stuck, the first to the goose, the others to one another - a condition that applies to everyone the simpleton encounters as he wends his way to the city, where the king has offered his daughter in marriage to the person who can make her laugh. This is a lively rendition of an appealing tale, complemented with illustrations in an angular, puppetlike style that recalls the story's folk origins. The skillful incorporation of an insistent refrain, modified for each character, begs for audience participation, as in this description of the first victim: "Hokety, pokety, stickety, stuck, poor Annabelle was down on her luck. / Wiggle and pull, she couldn't shake loose, and she had to stay with the simpleton's goose." The participants may be unlucky, but readers of this concisely told, artfully synchronized picture book will be winners. m.m.b. Virginia Hamilton, Reteller Her Stories: African American Folktales, Fairy Tales, and True Tales (Intermediate) Illustrated by Leo and Diane Dillon. Traditional and true African-American stories "of the female kind" have been brought together, retold, and briefly discussed by Virginia Hamilton in her third collection illustrated by the Dillons. The author groups the stories into sections such as "Her Animal Tales," "Her Fairy Tales," and "Her Supernatural," with perhaps the most interesting being the final section, "Her True Tales," the oral histories of three African-American women. These place the previous stories in their social, historical, and emotional context. The style of each telling has been subtly adapted to reflect the tale's tone and origin, and the author's comments following each tale are informal and informative. This oversized volume is distinctly different in appearance from Hamilton and the Dillons' previous collaborations, The People Could Fly and Many Thousand Gone (both Knopf). Text is placed on a framed, buff-colored insert on each white page, as are the slick full-color illustrations. The artwork is not evenly executed. Some pieces, such as the portraits of Catskinella and Annie Christmas, are reminiscent of the work of Trina Schart Hyman. The book will be well used by storytellers and others interested in traditional literature and "her stories." m.b.s. Warwick Hutton, Reteller-Illustrator Odysseus and the Cyclops (Picture Book) In his series of retellings of stories from Greek mythology, Hutton has provided approachable introductions for younger readers to sources of images and allusions that are part of the Western tradition in art and literature. This story of the confrontation between the Greek heroes returning from the Trojan War and Polyphemus, the one-eyed giant in whose cave they have taken temporary refuge, is perhaps one of the more dramatic episodes from the Odyssey and one of timeless interest. Hutton's spare text and storytelling style suggest preliterary origins, but his illustrations give a sense of times past and the all-pervading influence of sea and sky. Polyphemus' one eye is smaller, less caricatured, than is sometimes seen, but thus more terrifying. Indeed, emphasis is more on ingenuity than on gore, which makes this interpretation more Greek in spirit - an appeal to the mind rather than merely to the emotions. m.m.b EricÿA. Kimmel, Reteller The Adventures of Hershel of Ostropol (Intermediate) Illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman. Kimmel retells ten stories about Hershel of Ostropol, a Jewish folk hero who lived during the first part of the nineteenth century. A man quick with a humorous saying or jest, Hershel lived by his wits, traveling from town to town in Eastern Europe. Readers may recognize Hershel from two of Kimmel's earlier books, Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins (Holiday) and What His Father Did (Houghton). The latter - which is also the first story in this collection - tells how an empty-pocketed Hershel tricks a stingy innkeeper into feeding him "until his buttons burst." Another time, Hershel is returning home from a distant town where he has earned some money when he encounters a terrifying bandit who takes all his earnings. Hershel begs the bandit to shoot several bulletholes through his coat and cap so his terror of a wife will believe he was truly robbed. The bandit complies, and when he runs out of bullets, Hershel punches him in the jaw and takes back his money. Money is a perennial problem for Hershel, and nothing pleases him more than acquiring it by outwitting rich, miserly folk. Stopping by the village tavern one afternoon, Hershel finds Count Potocki, who wagers one thousand rubles that Hershel can't tell a story so incredible that the count won't believe it. After many tall tales - including one about bees as big as wolves - all of which the count insists he believes, Hershel tells about meeting the count's mother in Hell, where she was sent for giving birth to "that rascal," the count. At that Count Potocki roars that Hershel is a liar, and Hershel happily pockets the money and leaves. Each story is illustrated by humorous black-and-white drawings. h.b.z. Mark Podwal, Reteller-Illustrator Golem: A Giant Made of Mud (Picture Book) Mark Podwal relates a version of the Jewish legend of the golem that was inspired by a meeting between the great sixteenth-century scholar/mystic Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel of Prague and Emperor Rudolf II, who had a great interest in alchemy and the occult. On his visit to the emperor's palace, the rabbi, seeing a silver spoon engraved with Hebrew letters, relates a story about a rabbi who had once used a similar spoon to bring to life a figure of mud and clay, a golem. The belief was that such a golem could serve to protect the Jewish people in times of great trouble. Interested in the story, the emperor makes the rabbi a gift of the strange silver spoon. But as time goes by, the emperor becomes erratic in his behavior, and evil advisers take over the land. Seeing the suffering inflicted on his people, the rabbi fasts and prays and determines to bring to life a golem to help protect the ghetto. For a time, the golem is indeed effective, but when one night an armed mob breaks into the ghetto, the golem goes berserk. No longer under the rabbi's control, he destroys everything in his path until the rabbi's prayers bring about the golem's end. The author closes by suggesting that somewhere a golem may be "waiting to be brought back to life . . . or perhaps all that remains are the stories." The sophisticated and striking illustrations, which use a combination of gouache, colored pencils, and ink, are most effective in suggesting the medieval and mystical Prague of this legend. h.b.z. NancyÿVan Laan, Reteller In a Circle Long Ago: A Treasury of Native Lore from North America g (Intermediate) Illustrated by Lisa Desimini. Van Laan's collection of twenty-five legends and poems is a sampler of the folklore of the native peoples of North America. She organizes the material by region, beginning with an Inuit poem from the Arctic and ending with "The Gift of Peace" from the Oto people of the Great Plains. The book is a journey across the continent and a glimpse of the values and lifestyles of many different nations. Van Laan is a skilled reteller - she re-creates the rhythms of oral storytelling in her writing and keeps each legend simple and direct. Each illustration suits the tone of the story it accompanies. For some illustrations, Desimini uses heavy, full-page paintings done in oils or acrylics, while other stories are illustrated with smaller, delicate framed pieces. Desimini's detailed borders reflect styles of art from different regions; for example, the section which includes tales from the Northwest coast begins with an illustration that recalls the totem poles of the Haida tribe. The collection is carefully documented with source notes. Van Laan also includes a map, an extensive introduction, and a brief description of each tribe. The collection is a true smorgasbord - readers will get a taste of the richness of Native-American folklore and will be tempted to search other books for a closer look at individual peoples. A hamdsome collection that treats both the folklore and the audience with respect. m.v.k. From HORN BOOK, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
A volume with as broad appeal as Hamilton's The People Could Fly (1985). All the stories collected feature females, but there similarities end; a variety of ordinary girls and women, her- vampires, mermaids, and witches inhabit humorous and frightening folktales, accounts of life in slavery taken from oral history collections, and elaborate fairy tales incorporating elements from many traditions into solid, African-American renderings. Hamilton divides the collection into ``Her Animal Tales,'' ``Her Fairy Tales,'' Her Supernatural,'' ``Her Folkways and Legends,'' and ``Her True Tales.'' Comments follow each story, offering insights and assurances of authenticity; source notes appear in the back. The Dillons bring luster to an already wonderful project, with polished acrylic portraits on creamy backgrounds; the pictures envelop the mythic aspects of the tales without abandoning their roots in ordinary human experience. It's hard to envision the shelf--children's or adults, on which this volume doesn't belong. (Folklore. 7+)
Booklist Review
Gr. 5^-8, younger for reading aloud. The storytelling is dramatic and direct in this collection of 19 tales about African American females, beautifully retold by Hamilton in a wide variety of simple, colloquial voices and styles. ("There was this glory-looking young girl in the times when animals talked. She was Lena, beauty" ). Animal tales, pourquoi tales, tales of the supernatural, legends, tall tales, and factual accounts are gathered in a large-size volume designed for group sharing, with big, clear type and wide margins. The stories also leave lots of space; the endings leave you wondering. The Dillons' glowingly detailed acrylic illustrations extend the horror, comedy, rhythm, and spirit of the tales, ranging from the glamour of the mermaid to the creepy terror of the Cat Woman to the legendary power of Annie Christmas, who was "coal black and tree tall." As in Hamilton's exquisite collection The People Could Fly (1985), the notes on the stories--where they came from, how they traveled and changed, what they mean--are as fascinating as the tales themselves. Reading about women who labored "from dayclean to daylean" and who made up stories in the great, lonesome night will inspire many young people to read more about folklore and to collect stories from family and community. Older readers may want to read this collection with Goss' new adult collection Jump Up and Say! [BKL O 15 95]. --Hazel Rochman