Hope

It might be a simple book, but Our Children Can Soar is touching in more ways than one. This book details the African-American struggle for an identity in history. It starts with the Revolutionary War and chronicles important blacks all the way up to modern day. The structure of each sentence is very simple, starting with "Our ancestors fought... so George could invent" and continuing all the way through the book with the same pattern until the reader gets to the end and the sentence structure changes for hte final page. Each set of pages is a full-bleed picture that shows the accomplishment of that person and begins the next sentence that pushes the reader through history. Each picture takes you into the time that the person lived. However, what is more amazing is that each picture was done by a different illustrator. Adding to this, the back of the book includes a quote from each illustrator about why they did the illustration that they did.

This book is one that I would definitely read during Black History Month in school. This book can help students appreciate the impact that different people have had on history by giving them a simple yet complicated picture that a number of people put together. As well, it gives a short summary of the impact each person had during his or her life. A project that could be done might be to have students design books with the same theme, covering different people who made an impact on history and led the way for other people to shine. I felt nothing but hopeful for our future after reading this book.