Bound To Stay Bound

Booklist - 08/01/2011 *Starred Review* Nelson, the creator of We Are the Ship (2008), recipient of both a Coretta Scott King Author Award and a Robert F. Siebert Medal, adds to his notable titles with this powerful view of African American history. Illustrated with 44 full-page paintings, including both portraits and panoramic spreads, this handsome volume is told in the fictionalized, informal voice of an African American senior looking back on her life and remembering what her elders told her. The tone is intimate, even cozy, as the speaker addresses a contemporary “honey chile” and shares historical accounts that sometimes take a wry view of inequality: about a journey north, for example, she observes that “Jim Crow has made the trip right along with us.” Grim struggle is always present in her telling, though, and the passages include the horror of race riots, illustrated with a terrifying painting of a burning cross. With such a broad time frame, there is a lot to fit into a100 or so pages, but Nelson effectively captures the roles of ordinary people in landmark events (“We called ourselves the Freedom Riders”) while presenting famous leaders who changed the world, from Frederick Douglass and Rosa Parks to Langston Hughes, Louis Armstrong, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and, finally, President Barack Obama. A detailed time line and a bibliography of books and DVDs closes this powerful, accessible history which will find wide circulation in both schools and public libraries. - Copyright 2011 Booklist.

School Library Journal - 09/01/2011 Gr 5 Up—Expanding his focus from the close-up view of history applied in previous books, Nelson uses his formidable skills for the larger landscape: the black experience in America from slavery to the presidency. Like most surveys, the book is organized by struggles and wars; unlike traditional overviews, the facts are filtered through the eyes of a black woman with attitude to spare. This invented narrator, whose "Pap" was kidnapped as a child in Africa and whose brothers fought in World War II, does not suffer fools. Her colloquial commentary, addressed to "honey" or "chile," introduces and interprets the events. Occasionally her voice drops out, and a more textbooklike tone prevails, but mostly her presence provides the heart and soul of the story; readers will care about this information because they care about her. Nelson's oil portraits and tableaux consistently display technical virtuosity, drama, and dignity. From single-page compositions of historical personalities (Frederick Douglass, Joe Louis, Rosa Parks) and representative characters (a Revolutionary War soldier, students at Woolworth's) to full-spread, murallike scenes of a slave ship, a battle, a big band, Nelson varies the viewpoint and contrasts light and darkness to tell a riveting tale. The purpose is presented in the prologue and recast in the epilogue and author's note: "You have to know where you came from so you can move forward." Provocative and powerful, this book offers a much-needed perspective for individuals of all ages seeking to understand America's past and present.—Wendy Lukehart, Washington DC Public Library - Copyright 2011 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission.

Bulletin for the Center... - 11/01/2011 The fictional narrator, an elderly African-American woman, weaves together family lore and American history to impart to her child listener understanding and pride in his heritage: “You have to know where you come from so you can move forward.” The resulting narrative is an intimately styled history lesson in which family members who took part in landmark events, from the Revolutionary War through the civil rights movement, take their rightful place beside players of greater renown. The narration spins out smooth as silk, and that is paradoxically the strength and the weakness of the title-a social studies lesson in which historical episodes are retold more compellingly than in any textbook, yet so ably and unfalteringly presented that the narrator herself seems (despite the frequent, down-homey interjections of “chile”) implausibly glib. There is ample reward here, however, even for children who don’t read a word of the text. Nelson’s monumental paintings portray the humblest laborers, the most prosaic families as heroic figures in the epic drama of their history, and unnamed faces are imbued with the same dignified pride as those of Douglass and King and Parks. A timeline, bibliography, and index will assist students trolling for report material, but it’s the powerful imagery that ultimately makes this essential to the American History collection. EB - Copyright 2011 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois.