There Was a Party for Langston
(Caldecott Honor & Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor)
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
A Caldecott Honor Book
A Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor Book
New York Times bestselling and award-winning author Jason Reynolds’s debut picture book is a snappy, joyous ode to Word King, literary genius, and glass-ceiling smasher Langston Hughes and the luminaries he inspired.
Back in the day, there was a heckuva party, a jam, for a word-making man. The King of Letters. Langston Hughes. His ABCs became drums, bumping jumping thumping like a heart the size of the whole country. They sent some people yelling and others, his word-children, to write their own glory.
Maya Angelou, Amiri Baraka, and more came be-bopping to recite poems at their hero’s feet at that heckuva party at the Schomberg Library, dancing boom da boom, stepping and stomping, all in praise and love for Langston, world-mending word man. Oh, yeah, there was hoopla in Harlem, for its Renaissance man. A party for Langston.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The creators' high-stepping testament to the enduring cultural influence of Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes (1901–1967) begins with the promise of a party: "a jam in Harlem to celebrate the word-making man." Rhythmic lines from Newbery Honoree Reynolds, making his picture book debut, aptly describe Hughes as "the best word maker around./ Could make the word MOTHER feel/ like real warm arms wrapped around you." In illustrations rendered with handmade stamps, Ezra Jack Keats Award Honorees the Pumphrey brothers apply stylized typography throughout, as on a page in which mother makes up the figure of a parent embracing a child. In the run-up to the party, pages hint at Hughes's ability to turn words into laughter that "rang out/ for years and years." And so, in 1991 at the NYPL's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, "a fancy-foot,/ get-down,/ all-out bash" is held in the poet's honor. There, the works of other Black writers peer out from book spines, and literary successors Maya Angelou and Amiri Baraka dance "like the best words do, together." Melding celebratory text and kinetic, graphical art, the creators underscore the power of the subject's poetry to move and to inspire. Figures are portrayed with brown skin throughout. An author's note concludes. Ages 4–8. Author's agent: Elena Giovinazzo, Pippin Properties. Illustrators' agent: Hannah Mann, Writers House.
Customer Reviews
Inspiring.
With amazing art and wonderful words, the book can encourage young people to appreciate the power of words.