When We Say Black Lives Matter
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
In a powerful, poetic missive, award-winning author-illustrator Maxine Beneba Clarke celebrates the meaning behind the words Black Lives Matter. Little one, when we say Black Lives Matter, we’re saying Black people are wonderful-strong. That we deserve to be treated with basic respect, and that history’s done us wrong. . . . Darling, when we sing that Black Lives Matter, and we’re dancing through the streets, we’re saying: fear will not destroy our joy, defiance in our feet. In this joyful exploration of the Black Lives Matter motto, a loving narrator relays to a young Black child the strength and resonance behind the words. In family life, through school and beyond, the refrains echo and gain in power, among vignettes of protests and scenes of ancestors creating music on djembe drums. With deeply saturated illustrations rendered in jewel tones, Maxine Beneba Clarke offers a gorgeous, moving, and essential picture book.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
With assured rhythm and poetic grace, Clarke offers this stirring epistle from a couple to their growing Black child, patiently enlightening them on the meaning of Black Lives Matter—surveying the phrase's history and how it represents a call for justice, pride, compassion, and solidarity in Black experiences. Refrain-like repetition of "When we... that Black Lives Matter..." punctuates elegant text: "Darling, when we sing that Black Lives Matter,/ and we're dancing through the streets,// we're saying: fear will not destroy our joy,/ defiance in our feet." A shifting typographic landscape highlights certain words in color while sentences dip and weave across the pages. Lightly tracing the maturing child's journey from birth to graduation, dynamic watercolor pencil illustrations rendered in an earthy palette, and enhanced by jewel-toned stained glass motifs, follow abstract Black figures across textured cardstock. At once a solemn eulogy, stirring paean, and tender triumph of a book. Ages 6–9.
