By and By
Charles Albert Tindley, the Father of Gospel Music
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
A stirring picture book biography from award-winning duo Carole Boston Weatherford and Bryan Collier, about gospel composer and preacher Charles Albert Tindley, best known for the gospel hymn “We’ll Understand It Better By and By.”
At a time when most African Americans were still enslaved, Charles Tindley was born free. His childhood was far from easy, with backbreaking hours in the fields, and no opportunity to go to school. But the spirituals he heard as he worked made him long to know how to read the Gospel for himself. Late at night, he taught himself to read from scraps of newspapers. From those small scraps, young Charles raised himself to become a founding father of American gospel music whose hymn was the basis for the Civil Rights anthem “We Shall Overcome.”
Told in lilting verse with snippets of spirituals and Tindley’s own hymns woven throughout, Carole Boston Weatherford’s lyrical words and Bryan Collier’s luminous pictures celebrate a man whose music and conviction has inspired countless lives.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Born in the rural South and hired out to farmers at age seven, Charles Albert Tindley (1851 1933) had a thirst for learning. He learned to read from newspaper fragments and walked miles to church, where reading was celebrated: "As I read the Bible aloud/ I had never felt so proud." As he grew, Tindley sought out teachers and studied for the ministry at night. Sturdy verse by Weatherford weaves the words of hymns the figure wrote ("A better home... I'm going there") into lines that describe his slow, steady rise through the Great Migration and Great Depression until he became pastor of an urban church with 15,000 parishioners and wrote dozens of hymns for them to sing. Collier creates one compelling watercolor and collage spread after another, from a view of the small boy shadowed by tall trees as he trudges to church to congregants joined in song with Tindley at the pulpit. Though Weatherford doesn't define gospel music or explain its further development, she artfully champions Tindley's achievements, and Collier portrays both the man and his life events with memorable visual power. An author's and illustrator's note and list of hymns conclude. Ages 4 8.
