TIMELINES FROM BLACK HISTORY: LEADERS, LEGENDS, LEGACIES

 This will be a brief post, for several reasons.

I'm overcommitted for the next few days, and plan to post a different review toward the end of the week. However, in the stack of library hold books I hauled home yesterday was one that I've been waiting for, and will wait no longer to share here.

DK Timelines, 2021

TIMELINES FROM BLACK HISTORY, Leaders, Legends, and Legacies is a DK book with a forward by Mireille Harper. The front pages indicate that two-thirds of the content are drawn from past timeline books, each of which I've examined. I value DK's role in libraries and lives. Their tagline is "FOR THE CURIOUS".  Over many years, teaching many ages, I've recognized that these oversized, richly illustrated, well written, and accurately detailed books are like magnets for readers. They do NOT need me to sing their praises, although I will do so here. Their popularity accounts for why it took so long to come through on my hold request.

It also explains why, in my overbooked week, I sat with this book for more than an hour, traveling  across centuries and global locations and faces/stories that ranged from familiar to utterly unknown.

When i closed the covers of this book I knew that I'd have to provide space and time to share it here, to lend my faint and unimportant voice to help usher this into the world of homes, classrooms, libraries, readers (OF ALL racial identities!), and other reviewers. 

Whether kids you know are back in physical buildings yet or not, make this the first and most important new addition to bookshelves. Buy it as gift for a teacher or school librarian you know, or a child/family at home. It will draw eyes immediately and repeatedly, and expand the awareness of everyone who picks it up that "BLACK HISTORY" is not a separate month, or parallel stream of history. 

And everyone WILL pick it up. 

Black lives and their accomplishments across millennia are the history and heritage of ALL of us, and must be understood and celebrated  as such. This is a luxurious, robust, informative, colorful, and irresistible platform to begin the process of amplifying and expanding unheard voices of the past and present. 

Do your part to share, will you, please?