WALK With Me Through Powerful Picture Books

 Two new picture books share several things. Each includes WALK in the title. Each addresses topics or issues that could be (actually ARE) stressful and wrapped in grief, yet each provides a deep experience with the positivity and potential of our lives.

AND THEY WALK ON  is written by Kevin Maillard and illustrated by Rafael López. 

ROARING BROOK PRESS, 2025

Luminous illustrations offer hints (and some subtle indicators of the ethnic origins), providing a sunset endpaper spread with vibrant tones and a winding trail, then echoing the same landscape in the closing endpapers, viewing it at sunset. That unless cycle of our planet mirrors the sense that we habitants also have an endless quality. 

The text is simple and lyrical, but capture the voice of the narrator, who only occasionally clarifies that with some "I" phrasing. This gives the text a sense of the child's distance from his experiences in the early pages. Someone has "walked on" , someone he cares for deeply, but what does that mean? 

Will he see them again? Where have they gone? their room seems unchanged, and the kitchen, the "hearth" of their home still beckons. That kitchen and the family's activity there (making grape dumplings) brings the missing someone back into existence, "like a cauldron of memory".

The conclusion pages offer even more of the connection and identity of this family and its members, those present and others walking on.  The luscious language reveals shifting mood, from concern to acceptance, celebrating the cultural sense that people we love never leave us, we walk on through our lives alongside them. 

Back matter includes helpful notes from both author and illustrator, as well as receive for those grape dumplings. This certainly fits well in collections about dealing with grief, but it seems to me it has potential for helping young readers recognize the concept of Death before they even experience it. Everything about it makes me want to read it again and again.

A second book that captures big concepts through words and text that wrap readers in care and conviction is THE WALK, 

ABROMS BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS
2023

written by award-winning creators, among my favorites. Winsome Bingham wrote the compelling and upbeat text while E. B. Lewis sets the scenes with his recognizable style:  familiar faces that might often be overlooked, shifting perspectives to assure that each person and detail merits our attention, rendered in tones that offer both depth and glow. In this case the endpapers are solid color- a golden splash that assures good things are ahead. 

The story opens with a girl and her granny preparing for a walk. Along the way they encounter and encourage folks from their neighborhood, as the girl asks questions and granny offers bits of personal and social history in simple snippets and hints. "The walk" they are taking is longer now that it once was, but no political commentary indicates why that is, or confronts readers directly with debates about access to their goal. Granny's nods to those who came before, to those who managed past struggles and walks, is subtle but certain and sincere. 

The language is direct and accessible, incorporating onomatopoetic phrases and capturing the rhythm of the neighborhood with "just right" word and illustration choices. 

"A sea of faces swimming 

upstream like a school of fish."

while the spread casts the walkers on sharp white backgrounds  as their  shadows double their numbers. 

Then the girl's big question catches in my throat as I read aloud. They arrive at their destination, and she asks, "Why do people vote?"

Granny answers firmly, "For HOPE, baby. For HOPE!" This captures the story in a nutshell, lifting it beyond a stroll or civic duty and making it personal. "Voting lets grown folks speak up."

That's just what the girls Mama had taught her to do. 

Evictions? Voting Rights? Echoes of American History

Since today is the "last day" of BLACK HISTORY MONTH, I should hurry to get this review posted, right?  

WRONG! 

The spotlight that this themed month offers on critical aspects of American history involving Black Americans is more than welcome, but my concern has always been that the topics, historic figures, and focus of attention are narrowed to this particular (shortest) month of the year. While teaching, I was aware of many teachers who had a set of lessons and/or collection of books that were routinely used during February, then packed away until the next year's students flipped that calendar page. 

Better than nothing? Yes. 

Sharing some otherwise neglected or intentionally hidden history? Yes.

Inadvertently teaching students that the rest of the year will be (conveniently?) directed toward a familiar and falsely narrow version of America and its past?  Yes.

This is why I've actively addressed this concern of mine since I created this blog more than a decade ago. Theme months of any kind, but ESPECIALLY Black History Month, results in a double-edged sword.

Even so, I am intentionally sharing this remarkable new picture book I received from CALKINS CREEK/Astra Books (with no promise of a review) because it serves as such an important asset in the lives of young readers. In this case, the publishers have indicated that the target audience is middle grade and teen readers. And YES, picture books are for all ages!

Calkins Creek/Astra books, 2022

EVICTED: The Struggle for the Right to Vote is written by Alice Faye Duncan and illustrated by Charly Palmer, each an award-winning creator of outstanding books in their own right. In this case the title alone seems to be ripped from the pages of current news headlines, but in fact depicts a time and place in our shared history that few have learned about, even during this dedicated theme month.

The cover illustration also indicates the personal, specific individuals who are the little-known heroes of this nonfiction and deeply researched account. Using intense, impressionistic brush strokes and colors, Palmer's cover are and interior illustrations manage to convey both the strength and suffering of one of the "tent city" families who suffered indignities and denial of their rights to vote while maintaining family and community unity. 

In the 1950s, Fayette County, Tennessee was the third largest land area in that state and the third poorest county in the entire country. That is directly tied to the fact that more than two-thirds of the population of that county were Black sharecroppers, managing to maintain homes and families despite the inequities and imbalance of a sharecropper's life. They dealt with the expenses, round-the-clock demands, and endless risks of a farmer's life, with the added burden of landowners' meager compensation, control of funding, and outright cheating. 

Although it was legal for all adults to vote, only thirty Black citizens were registered in that county at that time. Outrght threats, fires, and lynchings ensured that white rule prevailed. In 1959, though, when a local sharecropper's trial enflamed the spirit and dignity of the wider Black population, a movement that came to be called the FAYETTE COUNTY TENT CITY MOVEMENT to acquire and use voting rights eventually contributed to the passage of the federal VOTING RIGHTS ACT. 

I don't usually begin my comments with such explanatory content, but I'm convinced that MANY other readers here have never heard of this part of American history. I had not. When the author was gifted a photographic book about this movement that featured specific individuals and families who helped to achieve eventual success, she resolved to create a portrait of them and their story in an appropriate book for younger readers. This is the result of her decision and actual visits, interviews, and research about that neglected chapter of our shared history. 

The account is preceded by several annotated/illustrated spreads providing Palmer's portraits of key figures of that time and change. Then a one-page direct address to readers from the author summarizes what the Movement was about and what it accomplished, at what sacrifices to the participants. The last line on that introduction is this:

"Record their conquering civil rights struggle for generations to come. Remember it. Pass it on."

The movement was inspired by a trial of a local preacher, who had escaped to the north to avoid being lynched, only to be returned for trial years later, in 1959. He was convicted and served his time. But the jury was all white, because jurors were drawn from the ranks of registered voters, and Black people were prevented from registering. As mentioned earlier, it was at risk of life and family's lives to even attempt registration. This realization launched leaders who set out to register black voters.

With page turns that reveal the unfolding story through individual specific voices of victims, organizers, participants, and others who eventually supported the movement, this account comes to life with drama and intensity. Readers are drawn into the lives and emotions of the adults and children who held fast to their intention to exercise their rights as American citizens, regardless of the cost. Some who are profiled took part in school integration with all the risks that triggered.

"Outsiders" came to support the movement as it stretched from months to years. Even so, the wheels of political change turn slowly and the changes they rightly demanded were slow in coming. Even so, or perhaps as a result of their prolonged strength and resilience, laws did change and lives improved. 

Except for this... 

Many Americans are convinced that the Civil Rights laws of the sixties meant things are changed and everything is better now. Nice and neat, all wrapped up in a pretty bow. In a way, as convenient and comfortable a thought as the packing away of Black History Month books and lesson plans on February 28 each year. But more than half the states in our country are actively passing laws to restrict access to voting, and eviction remains a punitive practice that is driven by economic benefits to the landowners. Not as much has changed as needs to. Added to that legislative effort are countless bills/laws that are intentionally meant to "BAN" books like this from classrooms because they might bring up some "feelings" among some students. 

The much-distorted and politicized CRITICAL RACE THEORY complaints would keep discussions of Black history out of schools. Well, CRT is a post-graduate course of study in law schools, not in elementary, middle grade, or high schools. But a consequence of this exaggerated and distorted effort might keep young Americans from learning about their country's history and the importance of FREEDOM to exercise rights for EVERYONE.

That author message is not only intended to keep a piece of history alive, though that should be done. Reading this should also enliven young people to learn, to act, to recognize and support today's individual leaders and local heroes, like the ones finally documented in this account. I am so grateful to have had a chance to read this historic account, and to share it with other readers here. I follow many reviewers, seek out information about new releases, and hear about picture books from many sources. Even so, this title had not reached my attention. That, as with the loss to history of the original story, is an enormous problem. I urge everyone to find and read and promote this book. I intend to do that. And while you are at it, join my little effort to assure that sharing BLACK HISTORY is a year-round effort. Every year.