Tom Feelings builds on the African tradition of oral storytelling by revealing the horrors of the Middle Passage via visual storytelling: ink and tempera paintings which recreate the terror of the torturous voyages with brutal beauty. Known as an illustrator of children’s books, Feelings’ visual journey into the disturbing history of African enslavement is more appropriate for mature children, young adults, and adults. The Middle Passage is an excellent reference for African American history that should be part of every school library’s collection. ( )

Overwhelming beauty and pain. A wonderful book. ( )

Middle Passage is one of the ultimate wordless picture books that tells the unforgiving journey of Africans through the Middle Passge from the slave forts of West Africa destined to the horrors of slavery in South America, the Carribean, and the Southern States of America. The beautiful illustrations by Tom Feelings expresses, without hesitation, the African Holocaust suffered at the hands of white criminals. Besides the dramatic illustrations, there is a powerful introduction by the Dr. John Henrik Clark, an authority on the African Diaspora. Thought provoking for classroom use-good for struggling readers. ( )

http://www.amazon.com/Middle-Passage-... ( )

From School Library Journal
YA?Feelings's art speaks to the soul in this magnificent visual record of the Black Diaspora in the Americas. Clarke provides a concise narrative of the slave trade, and then readers pause at a double-spread image of a man, woman, bird, sun, and land before the pages become horrific. Guns, yokes, chains, whips, knives?one can see anger, grief, sadness, pain, and almost hear the screams coming from the captives' open mouths. The crowded holes, ankle chains, branding, rats, and sharks swarming around the ship as bodies are thrown overboard all build, image by image, to the reality of man's inhumanity to man. White enforcers are depicted more as wisps than as defined persons, while blacks are primarily drawn with sharp definition. The art is rendered in pen-and-ink and tempera on rice paper and printed in tritone (two black inks and one gray, plus a neutral press varnish). The satin feel of the thick, oversized pages; the black endpapers; the gray introductory and end matter; and pure white backgrounds for the journey itself demonstrate the care that went into the book's production. A powerfully rendered reality that all teens deserve the opportunity to experience.?Barbara Hawkins, Oakton High School, Fairfax, VA
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
In his introduction, Feelings, known best for his children's book celebrating African creativity, Soul Looks Back in Wonder (1993), explains why he chose to create this picture book for adults about the Middle Passage, the horrific transatlantic journey that brought enslaved Africans to the land of their imprisonment. Racial violence in the U.S. during the 1960s had filled him with despair, prompting him to move to Ghana to nurture the joy he could still detect deep in his heart. Living in Africa was a soul-saving affirmation of self and creativity for Feelings, but it also forced him to confront the brutal reality of the slave trade. It took Feelings 20 years to complete this wrenching but forthright and, ultimately, cathartic work of art, testimony not only to our capacity for evil, but also to the triumph of the spirit and of beauty. Donna Seaman