Black History Month: Spotlight on Sean Qualls

On a separate note, I have decided this year to get back to my goal of checking out all of the Caldecott Medal winners. I am just checking out five a month, so it is not overwhelming.

It makes sense to write about that here, because some of them aren't very well-written. This is disappointing, but logical; the award is for the illustrations, not the text. (And it's still not as disappointing as some of the more racist illustrations and text, especially for 1940 and 1941.)

I decided I wanted to focus on the work of Sean Qualls because reading two books he had illustrated showed me that I really liked his style. It may have helped that I liked those books. However, Emmanuel's Dream was an award winner for the content. I don't remember if The Poet Slave of Cuba was on the recommended list for readings related to Cuba, or if I read it because I really liked Margarita Engle after reading some on the list, those were recommendations based on text.

The fact is, illustrating is a business.

To be fair, there were sometimes notes from the illustrator, and there were books that he liked better than I did. Maybe he made himself like them to be able to do a good job, or maybe he grew fond of them after working on them and thinking about them and trying to make the best work of them. That being said, finding an illustrator you like may not be the best way to find books where you like how they were written.

And yet, maybe it's not a terrible way either. Some of the books were pretty good, and I don't know that I would have found them in another way. Some of them could still inspire good discussions. All of them have good art. I really like his collage style. It is fun that there were a couple of collaborations with his wife.

That being said, Phillis' Big Test and especially Two Friends: Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass do not do justice to the history, and most of the letters in A Velocity of Being: Letters to a Young Reader are not that great. How We Are Smart isn't that convincing, but that may be more of a problem with how multiple intelligence story is understood. None of those are on Qualls.

Dizzy was great, and putting it together with books on Ella Fitzgerald and John Coltrane makes for a nice theme. Sally Derby's book, Jump Back, Paul not only educates about Paul Dunbar but gives a kind of blueprint for appreciating poetry. There is also impressive work with words by Langston Hughes and Toni Morrison and Mandela family members. I really liked Who Will I Be, Lord?

I think Bird in a Box could have used better editing, but it was still entertaining.

It is a recurring theme of these months that as you cast a wide net not everything is of equal quality, but the search is still worthwhile. A book you give three stars is still pretty good, even if not as good as the five star books.

I see posters in the library about reading your child 1000 books before they start kindergarten. That seems like a lot, but that is basically reading them one book a night for three years (a bit less), and you have five years before kindergarten. Of course, there will be repeats, but there is room for many different books.

Of course, buying that many books would be expensive and impossible to store. Be a good patron of your library and it will be easy. They were only missing one of the books listed under Sean Qualls. I will find that one eventually, and I have requested the two that came out new since I looked.

I must have enjoyed the looking.

https://www.seanqualls.com/