A Dream...

It's been nearly fifty years since Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stood on the steps at the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963 during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom delivering his I Have A Dream speech.  Did you know in 1964 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was the youngest man to ever win the Nobel Peace Prize?  Did you know that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was first observed as a national holiday on January 20, 1986?  Did you know that on August 22,  2003 the National Park Service dedicated a work, an inscription, marking the spot where Dr. King gave his speech at the Lincoln Memorial?

I did not recall knowing those three facts prior to doing a bit of research.  After I read I Have A Dream (Schwartz & Wade) by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. with paintings by Kadir Nelson, I was compelled to know more, needing to step back in time moving slowly forward until 2013.  That is what nonfiction picture books with an interesting,  informative narrative enhanced by unique, outstanding illustrations do for a reader.  They completely engage and ignite the spark of curiosity.  They invite reflection and discussion.


Kadir Nelson selected the last five minutes of Dr. King's speech to illustrate.  The first of seventeen original oil paintings is show on the front and back jacket and cover of this title.  We see a face filled with strength, resolve and vision against a crystal blue sky spotted with clouds.

The front endpapers pick up the faint pale blue on the edges of those clouds; the closing endpapers the darker blue of the sky.  With two exceptions all of the illustrations span two pages, edge to edge.  The title page gives the reader a bird's eye view of the entire area around the Lincoln Memorial on that memorable day.  Off to the left side the publishing information and dedication are displayed in a narrow column of white.  So striking is this painting (as they all are) your eyes immediately look to each and every detail barely noticing the print initially.

I say to you today, my friends, that even 
though we face the difficulties of today and 
tomorrow, I still have a dream. 


Nelson begins with the columns of the memorial on the left, Lincoln in the background and Dr. King squarely in front of the statue looking out toward the people.  For each portion of the speech he shifts his perspective; zooming back to capture the expanse of the crowd on either side of the Reflecting Pool, facial close-ups of people mentioned in the speech, and back to a side view, very close, of Dr. King's face as he says

I have a dream today.

When picturing children grasping hands in a circle we only see two of them completely; hands, running feet, backs of heads of the others indicate movement.  That painting and the one of the two large hands grasped are surrounded in white accentuating their purpose, their meaning.  When Nelson's landscapes, the every valley, and the eight sections of New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, Colorado, California, Georgia, Tennessee and Mississippi are shown the color choices and lighting are breathtaking in the grandeur portrayed.

The crowd of children's faces and the snapshot of those faces gathered during the speech are so realistic, full of emotion, you expect them to walk right off the page into your presence.  Bringing the whites and blue of the front and back jacket and cover to the final two-page illustration is a stroke of genius.  Reading this portion of the speech through the eyes of Kadir Nelson's paintings is like walking through a museum of memories; perhaps the very thoughts Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. might have been thinking on that day, August 28, 1963.


I Have A Dream by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. brilliantly illustrated by Kadir Nelson is moving and unforgettable.  There is an official recording of the speech on a CD included with the book as well as the complete speech printed at the back.  With the recording playing, as each page is turned, is like being enveloped in history.

The publishers have designed an excellent resource for this title complete with booknotes and a poster.  This is a link to the Nobel Peace Prize page for Dr. King.  The Seattle Times has created a very comprehensive series of pages about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement.

This video is award-winning Kadir Nelson speaking about his illustrations for this title.

Excerpts of the speech copyright 1963 by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., copyright renewed 1991 by Coretta Scott King, and the Heirs to the Estate of Martin Luther King, Jr.

You Can Feel It---It's In The Air

I remember the summer of 1964 having just turned 13, of understanding our country was in the midst of change.  The summer before, the I Have a Dream speech was delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial by Martin Luther King, Jr. only to be followed less than three months later by the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.  When you live through history its mark is forever on your mind.

For those not having lived in those moments various forms of media, movies, television, history textbooks, nonfiction books and fiction novels, are their informants, teachers, coloring them with their perception of the past.  Children and young adults today (all of us really) are fortunate to have outstanding author's dedicated to bringing an honesty to their writing whether nonfiction or fiction.  Debut novelist, Augusta Scattergood, has penned a piece of historical fiction, Glory Be (Scholastic Press), stepping back to the summer of 1964, taking readers south to Hanging Moss, Mississippi where most everything in Gloriana June Hemphill's life is in flux.

Glory Be is more than ready to turn twelve years old.  She is excited for its annual celebration held at the segregated community pool on July 4th, her birthday.  What she's not expecting is the pool's closing predicted by J. T., the older, bullying, small town, football hero brother of her best friend, Frankie. 

The newly arrived Freedom Workers have some folks in town, those set in their ways, fearful of things not being the way they've always been, in an uproar.  Glory finds solace in the town library, having helped Miss Bloom, the librarian, after hearing this unsettling news.  While there she meets Laura Lampert, the daughter of the woman who has set up the Freedom Clinic, having come down south to help.

Emma, the cook at the Hemphill household, has been there since Glory Be's mother died, providing support, love and counsel for both Glory Be and her older sister, Jesslyn.  Their father, a preacher at First Fellowship United Church, when not involved in church business, is a strong central figure in the girls' lives.  Another newcomer in town is added to the cast of characters, a teen, also a Yankee, competition for J. T. on the football team, Robbie Fox.

What readers have in this story is a big ole' storm brewing like a pot of water getting ready to boil, each character giving their voice, their stand, to the pool's closing.  It's also a summer of shifts in relationships, some old and some new; between sisters, between friends, between the white people and the African Americans in Hanging Moss, Mississippi and between a boy and a girl.  Nothing is going to be the same except for the things that should be, freedom, courage, truth and love.

Every single character is exactly as they need to be for this story to work so well. Certainly some are flawed more than others but all exemplify the attitude, the beliefs, and the actions taken realistically during the summer of 1964 in Mississippi.  Readers are immediately drawn into the story through the interplay of Glory Be with each of these people; loving her openness and pure gumption.

Augusta Scattergood is a storyteller in the tradition of all good weavers of words.  Her descriptions of events are so vivid, like snapshots of time, you are sure you could remove and place them in a scrapbook. The essence of life in the south, the dialogue, is so real, after turning the final page, the first words out of your mouth will likely be spoken with a southern drawl.

Here are a couple of passages from Glory Be.

When she handed me my tea, I pressed our palms together. "Look here, Emma," I said.  "My hand's the same as yours."
She shook her head and laughed.  "Glory, sweetie, our hands aren't a thing alike.  But they match up pretty good."
I looked hard at our hands together.  Emma was right--they were different.  Mine were getting nearly as big as Emma's, but her hands were the color of her coffee.  Mine were white as Wonder bread.  Still, Emma and me, we fit together like that Praying Hands statue over at Daddy's church.

From over on the library lawn, drums and trumpets tuned up for the parade.  Dottie Ann Morgan, the Hanging Moss High School homecoming queen, waved from the back of a red convertible, wearing a tiara over her beehive hairdo.  I didn't wave back.  She kept smiling, but she was scratching at the place where her ruffly dress's poof skirt must've been itching the daylights out of her.  Some little kid dropped his cotton candy in the dirt and started bawling for his mamma.  A bee buzzed around my head, and finally landed in my juice pitcher. 

George Santayana is known for saying, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."  It's not history textbooks that intrigue readers, that entice them into the past, but historical fiction excelling in its sense of place, time and people.  A book such as Glory Be, conceived and written by Augusta Scattergood, is what gives life to history, ringing with a crystal-clear truth, so readers can learn, grow and rise above what has happened before.

I will be placing a copy of this title on my personal shelves, recommending it to colleagues and students.  For more insight into the writing of this novel visit Augusta Scattergood's website linked to her name above.  The interview on NPR is especially interesting.