Gordon Parks: How the Photographer Captured Black and White America

by Carole Boston Weatherford, Jamey Christoph (Illustrator)

Overview

The Society of Illustrators Original Art Exhibit 2015
2015 NAACP Image Award—Outstanding Literary Work, Children
New York Public Library's 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing
Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People 2016—CBC/NCSS

STARRED REVIEW! "Weatherford writes in the present tense with intensity, carefully choosing words that concisely evoke the man. Parks' photography gave a powerful and memorable face to racism in America; this book gives him to young readers."—Kirkus Reviews starred review

"This is a promising vehicle for introducing young children to the power of photography as an agent for social change, and it may make them aware of contemporary victims of injustice in need of an advocate with a camera."—The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

The story of a self-taught photographer who used his camera to take a stand against racism in America.

His white teacher tells her all-black class, You'll all wind up porters and waiters. What did she know? Gordon Parks is most famous for being the first black director in Hollywood. But before he made movies and wrote books, he was a poor African American looking for work. When he bought a camera, his life changed forever. He taught himself how to take pictures and before long, people noticed. His success as a fashion photographer landed him a job working for the government. In Washington DC, Gordon went looking for a subject, but what he found was segregation. He and others were treated differently because of the color of their skin. Gordon wanted to take a stand against the racism he observed. With his camera in hand, he found a way. Told through lyrical verse and atmospheric art, this is the story of how, with a single photograph, a self-taught artist got America to take notice.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807530177
Publisher:	Whitman, Albert & Company
Publication date:	02/01/2015
Pages:	32
Sales rank:	159,666
Product dimensions:	8.20(w) x 10.00(h) x 0.40(d)
Lexile:	AD840L (what's this?)
Age Range:	5 - 8 Years

About the Author

Carole Boston Weatherford is the author of several acclaimed poetry collections and poetic biographies, including Sugar Hill and Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom, winner of a Caldecott Honor, the Coretta Scott King Award for Illustration, and the NAACP Image Award. She teaches at Fayetteville State University in North Carolina.

Jamey Christoph studied illustration at the Ringling College of Art and Design. His illustrations have appeared in a variety of major publications and in several award-winning children’s books. He has also received multiple recognitions from the Society of Illustrators and Communication Arts. He works out of his home in Maryland and loves a sunny day on the Eastern Shore with his two crazy dogs, Spencer and Owen.

Read an Excerpt

Gordon Parks

How the Photographer Captured Black and White America

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By Carole Boston Weatherford, Jamey Christoph

ALBERT WHITMAN & Company

Copyright © 2015 Carole Boston Weatherford
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8075-3017-7

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CHAPTER 1

The youngest of fifteen, Parks arrives stillborn and is nearly left for dead until a dip in ice water shocks his tiny heart to beat. The baby is named for the man who saved his life, Dr. Gordon.

When young Gordon crosses the prairie on horseback, nothing seems beyond reach.

But his white teacher tells her all-black class, You'll all wind up porters and waiters.

What did she know?

After Gordon loses his mother at age fourteen, he moves in with his sister in Minneapolis.

Soon on his own, Gordon works odd jobs: busboy, piano player, and finally porter and waiter.

Twenty-five years old and all but broke when a magazine spread about migrant farm workers inspires him to buy a used camera. That $7.50 is the best money he will ever spend.

In one month he teaches himself enough for an exhibit at a camera store.

Soon, he is shooting fashion and portraits. One model tells him to take his camera to the big city.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Gordon Parks by Carole Boston Weatherford, Jamey Christoph. Copyright © 2015 Carole Boston Weatherford. Excerpted by permission of ALBERT WHITMAN & Company.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Editorial Reviews

★ 12/22/2014
Weatherford’s (Leontyne Price: Voice of a Century) spare, lyrically formatted prose combines with Christoph’s (the Origami Science Adventures series) stylized illustrations to tell the story of 20th-century African-American Renaissance man Gordon Parks. The present-tense narrative takes readers from the birth Parks barely survived through the odd jobs of his early years to his adulthood as a self-taught photographer and later novelist, musician, photojournalist, and director. Troubled by what he sees in the nation’s capital, “Park vows to lay bare racism/ with his lens.” His iconic 1942 photograph, “American Gothic,” depicts African-American cleaning woman Ella Watson, broom in one hand and mop in another, the U.S. flag as her backdrop. “She knows all too well/ that the opportunities/ the flag symbolizes are denied her/ because of skin color.” Christoph’s spreads echo the pared narrative with a muted palette and modest styling, but their impact is powerful. One shows Parks observing black families who live in rundown alley dwellings as the shiny, white U.S. Capitol building looms in the distance. An afterword fleshes out Parks’s story and includes a few b&w photos he took, including “American Gothic.” Ages 5–8. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

"This effective overview is a solid addition for those looking to beef up their biography collections." Starred Review, School Library Journal, February 1, 2015

"This is a promising vehicle for introducing young children to the power of photography as an agent for social change, and it may make them aware of contemporary victims of injustice in need of an advocate with a camera." The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, May 2015

"Created with a certain elegance of line, Christoph's artwork includes many haunting, beautifully composed scenes." Booklist, February 1, 2015

"Christoph's spreads echo the pared narrative with a muted palette and modest styling, but their impact is powerful." Starred Review, Publishers Weekly, December 22, 2014

"Weatherford writes in the present tense with intensity, carefully choosing words that concisely evoke the man. Parks' photography gave a powerful and memorable face to racism in America; this book gives him to young readers." Starred Review, Kirkus Reviews, January 1, 2015

From the Publisher

★ 02/01/2015
Gr 1–3—This picture book biography of Gordon Parks highlights the growth of his career as a photographer. Despite receiving little encouragement at school, Parks not only excelled at photography but also wrote novels, penned poetry, and composed music. The rich, varied text ("Boiling mad, Parks vows to lay bare racism with his lens.") is complemented by the illustrations, which sharply contrast Parks's life—mostly shown in full color—with sketches of his photographs—in black-and-white or sepia tones. Parks's career, which began with fashion shots and portraits, took off when he landed a job working for the Farm Security Administration in Washington, DC. There, he became keenly aware of the inequalities between blacks and whites and began to document these differences. When his boss directed him to talk to Ella Watson, a cleaning lady in the building, he photographed her at home with her family and produced his most famous photograph: American Gothic. An author's note provides additional information and includes reproductions of four of Parks's photographs. While the book gets off to a choppy start, moving very rapidly over the photographer's early life, it provides a much-needed portrait of a talented individual and views of his work. VERDICT This effective overview is a solid addition for those looking to beef up their biography collections. Fans of Weatherford's Leontyne Price: Voice of a Century (Knopf, 2014), Becoming Billie Holiday (Wordsong, 2009), and I, Matthew Henson: Polar Explorer (Walker, 2007) will appreciate this attractive offering.—Myra Zarnowski, City University of New York

School Library Journal

★ 2014-12-22
He aimed his camera lens at fashion models and at struggling African-American workers.Parks, a talented and multifaceted man, was born in the Midwest in 1915 and attended a school where the white teacher told the black students that they would "all end up porters and waiters." But Parks, at 25, was inspired by a magazine article and spent $7.50 on a used camera. He went on to work in Washington, D.C., for the Farm Security Administration, capturing pictures of African-Americans in their everyday lives—not the white men of the monuments. Famously, he portrayed a cleaning lady name Ella Watson in a portrait that became known as his American Gothic. Echoing the farmers in Grant Woods' painting, Watson posed in front of an American flag with a broom in one hand and a mop in the other. Weatherford writes in the present tense with intensity, carefully choosing words that concisely evoke the man. Christoph's digitally rendered illustrations brilliantly present Parks' world through strong linear images and montages of his photographs. One double-page spread hauntingly portrays run-down buildings with the Capitol Dome hovering in the distance. Parks' photography gave a powerful and memorable face to racism in America; this book gives him to young readers. (afterword, author's note, photographs) (Picture book/biography. 6-8)

Kirkus Reviews