My Hands Sing the Blues: Romare Bearden's Childhood Journey

by Jeanne Walker Harvey, Elizabeth Zunon (Illustrator)

Overview

As a young boy growing up in North Carolina, Romare Bearden listened to his great-grandmother’s Cherokee stories and heard the whistle of the train that took his people to the North—people who wanted to be free. When Romare boarded that same train, he watched out the window as the world whizzed by. Later he captured those scenes in a famous painting, Watching the Good Trains Go By. Using that painting as inspiration and creating a text influenced by the jazz that Bearden loved, Jeanne Walker Harvey describes the patchwork of daily southern life that Romare saw out the train’s window and the story of his arrival in shimmering New York City. Artists and critics today praise Bearden’s collages for their visual metaphors honoring his past, African American culture, and the human experience. Elizabeth Zunon’s illustrations of painted scenes blended with collage are a stirring tribute to a remarkable artist.

My Hands Sing the Blues is the recipient of the 2012 IRA Children’s and Young Adults’ Book Award-Primary Nonfiction, as well as the gold winner of a Moonbeam Children’s Book Award in the category of Picture Book-All Ages.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780761458104
Publisher:	Amazon Publishing
Publication date:	01/05/2012
Pages:	40
Product dimensions:	10.20(w) x 10.10(h) x 0.40(d)
Lexile:	AD610L (what's this?)
Age Range:	6 - 8 Years

About the Author

Author Jeanne Walker Harvey lives in Ross, California.

Illustrator Elizabeth Zunon grew up in the Ivory Coast of West Africa and lives in Albany, New York. This is her first illustrated picture book.

Editorial Reviews

Readers might tap their feet reading the jazzy poetry or perhaps try their hand at a collage. There is an opportunity to learn about the Underground Railroad, Harlem, and Jim Crow Laws. But the lesson Bearden teaches us is that art can help make sense of the events in our lives.” —Callie Feyen, Christian Home & School

From the Publisher

Harvey presents an imagined first-person narrative in the form of a blues poem by master collage artist Bearden.

Romare muses from his New York studio, conjuring his train journey as a 3-year-old with his parents, from North Carolina to Harlem during the Great Migration from the south to the north. In a note, Harvey comments that Bearden drew analogies between his artistic process and jazz improvisation, which fuels her approach. Drawing inspiration from the artist's collage Watching the Good Trains Go By (reproduced within), 14 of Harvey's 21 verses focus on the trip, from tearful goodbyes with great-grandparents to the onomatopoeia of the train's sounds and the chance sights rolling by. "I spy a woman by a washtub, stirring, staring up at me. / I wonder what she's thinking, staring up at me. / Maybe that tomorrow so far away I'll be." The talented Zunon's pictures intriguingly combine realistic faces, stylized landscapes and photo-collage that pays homage to Bearden's art. Facial images are potentially a bit confusing: The adult Bearden could be mistaken for a teenager, while the preschooler making his first train trip seems more circumspect than a 3-year-old might be.

The interplay of poetic and visual metaphor makes for a striking presentation; adults who can appreciate and chant the bluesy poem as well as sensitively interpret the pictures together with children are the ideal collaborators in savoring this intriguing work. (author's note, source notes, resources) (Picture book. 5-8)

Kirkus Reviews