Slade Morrison (–2010)

The Aesop's fable with hip-hop ambience. Set in what looks like NewYork City, Ant and Grasshopper spend the summer hanging out in the park, romping and rapping. Fall sets in and Ant feels the need to start gearing up for winter. While he works to prepare his home and store food, Grasshopper keeps making enjoyable music. Winter arrives and the bedraggled Grasshopper looks to Ant to provide refuge. But Ant refuses, saying he "should have known what tomorrow would bring. Then you wouldn't be show more begging for anything."Grasshopper declares "I'm an artist, that's what I do! You loved my music so respect me too!" The story ends not on the side of the ant, but unresolved.Who's right, who's got game: the practical one or the artist? The last page of Grasshopper slogging alone in the snowstorm is spooky and unsettling. show less

Comfort the Disturbed, Disturb the Comfortable would be a perfect subtitle for this book for those who don't understand its power. Nobel Prize -winning author and poet Toni Morrison really socks it to us with The Big Box, an illustrated poem about three children who get punished just for being themselves. Featuring a multiracial cast illustrated by Morrison's Slade, The Big Box will chill the spine of all but the most unfeeling adults and give context and power to any child who has felt show more caged. The text of the poem is deceptively simple, with (over)tones at multiple levels of access for multiple kinds of readers. Recommended for children 5 and up and the adults in their lives. show less

Joyful exuberance abounds in this mother-son collaboration that celebrates family ties and the joys of eating peanut-butter fudge. Mother leaves her three children in the care of Nana with a long list of virtuous instructions (lunch: peas, carrot sticks, fish fingers) that seems imperiled by a grandmother who wears high-top red sneakers. And in danger they are. To a playfully rhyming text, the whole crew starts out with a nap, followed by a story, a potato-sack hop, a yummy lunch (biscuits show more and ham; no carrot sticks visible), dancing, games and finally the fudge recipe, which is a “family secret.” Mother returns and—thank goodness—memories (in misty black and white) of preparing that same recipe quickly erase her horror. Cepeda’s brightly rendered oil paints in hot shades of green, pink, blue and yellow can barely contain the mayhem and mess. A fast-paced read-aloud that celebrates intergenerational love with a mixing-bowl–ful of humor and just a teaspoon of irreverence. Fudge recipe included. (Picture book. 4-7)

-Kirkus Review show less

Please, Louise by Toni Morrison is a picture book about a parent teaching a child how to trust the world, even when it seems dangerous and scary. The story follows a girl as she walks to the library just as a rainstorm is brewing. The route there is full of unknown, scary things and shifty looking people.

But the story isn't about finding safety and solace in the library. Sure, that's part of it, and libraries should be welcoming places. But it's a bigger message — learning to trust people, show more and learning to see the best in people, rather than danger.

Now stop and think for a moment about who wrote the book, Toni Morrison, a nobel prize winning black poet. It was published in a year marked by a number of senseless murders of black youth by white police officers. Sure, the illustrator, Shandra Strickland opted to make the main character possibly Asian, but the message is still there: please, Louise, I hope you can live in a world where you can trust your neighbors because you should be able to. show less