Go Tell It!: How James Baldwin Became a Writer

Gr 2-5–“The first time James Baldwin read a book, the words clung to him like glitter.” Poet Harris (We Made It to School Alive) certainly has a way with words and deploys them generously to invite children into the imagination, experience, and passions of James Baldwin. Finding an ideal partner in illustrator James (I Am Every Good Thing), whose oil on boards capture the child, the Harlem surroundings, the greater world that adopted Baldwin before his home country did, Harris creates a spirited, vividly realized version of the events of the subject’s childhood. An inveterate bookworm, he read everything, facing the fury of his stepfather, a preacher, for not reading solely the Bible. Worse, despite his wish to write a book like those that sang to him from the library shelves, he also learned that he “could be beaten for his color” by the police. His answer was to heal through writing; as a young man, he offered counter-sermons to his stepfather’s angry ones and began to preach of love and hope. In his travels to Paris, he found a larger world in which he could be himself and tell his story. Harris’s use of glitter as a metaphor is apt, and his balletic journey through the key developments of Baldwin’s life prevents the topics from growing too heavy for the audience. The paintings have a loose, joyful quality, with dancing painted words in the background, an effect that drives home the importance of Baldwin’s love of words and reading in pushing him forward through hardships and discovery. What an impeccable biography.