Bound To Stay Bound

Booklist - 09/01/2022 *Starred Review* In this truly elegant picture book, award-winning author Weatherford has written new stanzas for the traditional call-and-response spiritual Standing in the Need of Prayer, highlighting various aspects of African American life and history. The accessible lyrics refer to historical events, beginning in the 1800s (It's families enslaved and sold apart . . . It's runaways fleeing the yoke by dark) and continuing through the twentieth century (It's freedmen seeking kin at Emancipation . . . It's millions on the move in the Great Migration) and on through the current day: It's record-breaking athletes who are so unreal . . . It's champions-turned-warriors who, in protest, kneel. Interspersed through each line of verse is the titular refrain (Standing in the need of prayer), and these lines can gently swell or ebb in cadence, allowing for dramatic read-alouds. As compelling as the text is, Morrison's illustrations nearly steal the show. His vibrant, dynamic paintings (created with oil and spray paint, a nod to his previous vocation as a graffiti artist) feature dignified individuals with expressive faces, often shown in contemplative attitudes. Back matter includes a detailed explanatory key for each stanza, an author's note, and a list of online resources. While the intended audience is presumably elementary, this beautiful offering with multiple applications has wide appeal for all ages. - Copyright 2022 Booklist.

School Library Journal - 10/01/2022 Gr 1–4—"It's me, it's me, O Lord,/ Standing in the need of prayer./ Not my father, not my mother,/ but it's me, O Lord,/ Standing in the need of prayer." A familiar spiritual is recast as a pledge to remember history and make a better future, and the lockstep of words and art feels as if Weatherford and Morrison were in harmony from the outset.A scene of a slave in shackles and another one for sale gives way to a portrait of Nat Turner and then to one that is an homage to the Emancipation Proclamation and the Great Migration. Portraits, like stepping stones through history, well-explained and documented in the back matter, reference people or moments mentioned in Weatherford's verses, from the Tuskegee Airmen, Duke Ellington and all of Black music, Ruby Bridges, Martin Luther King, Jr., Florence Griffith Joyner, Colin Kaepernick, and Black Lives Matter. The force of the words along with the glowing, sculptural lines of Morrison's paintings will draw onlookers into the journey through time and pain, to two modern children carrying protest signs and facing readers directly, ready and hopeful for what's next. VERDICT An evocative use of prayer as old-school protest with a history lesson that is as lilting as a ballad, this spiritual demands a group setting to be fully appreciated for the uplifting answers it provides.—Kimberly Olson Fakih - Copyright 2022 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission.