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Friday, April 22, 2016

PB Review: Harlem's Historic Neighborhood Sugar Hill

During the month of April, I have been inspired to write with rhythm and rhyme. Angie Karcher’s Rhyming Picture Book Month (#RhyPiBoMo) is a wealth of information. Thanks to the authors, agents and editors who shared their experience and tips. If you haven't followed Angie's blog, then pull up a chair, pour a cup of coffee and click HERE.
RhyPiBoMo 2016 Calendar


This week I focused on the author and poet, Carole Boston Weatherford, who "mines the past for family stories, fading traditions, and forgotten struggles." Many of her books show stories of African-American historical figures and events. Several of her picture books rhyme, like the one I'm reviewing.

Harlem's Historic Neighborhood Sugar Hill

written by Carole Boston Weatherford
illustrated by R. Gregory Christie
Published by Albert Whitman & Company, 2014


Book Review
Take a walk through Harlem’s Sugar Hill and meet all the amazing people who made this neighborhood legendary. With upbeat rhyming, read-aloud text, Sugar Hill celebrates the Harlem neighborhood that successful African Americans first called home during the 1920s. 

The back matter includes brief biographies of jazz greats Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Sonny Rollins, and Miles Davis; artists Aaron Douglas and Faith Ringgold; entertainers Lena Horne and the Nicholas Brothers; writer Zora Neale Hurston; civil rights leader W. E. B. DuBois and lawyer Thurgood Marshall.

The story begins - 

Sugar Hill, Sugar Hill where life is sweet
And the "A" TRAIN stops for the black elite.

My favorite line - 
Where lovely LENA takes Sunday strolls 
that shoot racist notions full of holes.


Watch Carole Boston Weatherford talk about her writing life 
and stories on Reading Rockets.