Profiles and Perspectives
Profiles and Perspectives
Violet J. Harris
In Praise of a Scholarly Force:
Rudine Sims Bishop
M
irrors. Windows. Sliding glass doors. These
words, typically associated with architecture, became, in
Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop’s scholarly writing, a succinct metaphor
for some of the primary purposes
of sharing multicultural literature
with children. Dr. Sims Bishop
offered the ideas when presenting
at conferences and in the courses
she taught at the University of
Massachusetts-Amherst and,
later, at The Ohio State University. She wrote:
THE EMERGENCE OF A
SCHOLARLY CANON
● No. 2 ●
November 2007
The article in Perspectives was
not the beginning of Dr. Sims
Bishop’s impact as a scholar and
teacher. That began with her analysis of African American children’s literature, Shadow and
Substance (1982). In a recent
conversation, I asked Dr. Sims
Bishop why she wrote Shadow
and Substance. She told me that
while teaching at Wayne State
University, she had conversations with a colleague concerning
their differing perspectives about
Black children’s literature. She
also remembers discussion with
others in the field about books
such as Oh Lord, I Wish I Was a
Buzzard (Greenburg, 2002), an
example of a text that elicited
opposing opinions. These factors developed within her a desire
to take a close look at available
African American children’s literature. Sims Bishop completed
a study of much of the literature
by and about Blacks published
between the years 1965 and 1979.
That study became the book
Shadow and Substance: AfroAmerican Experience in Contemporary Children’s Fiction (1982).
Vol. 85
The timing of this metaphoric
gift does not matter much anymore. What does matter is the
fact of its existence and resonance with countless others.
Those others took the idea to
of “multicultural literature.” In the
following pages, I pay tribute to a
scholar whom I regard as a mentor, comrade in ideas, and friend.
Many of the comments attributed
to Dr. Sims Bishop are drawn
from a recent telephone conversation (May 2007).
Language Arts ●
Books are sometimes windows,
offering views of worlds that may
be real or imagined, familiar or
strange. These windows are also
sliding glass doors, and readers have only to walk through in
imagination to become part of
whatever world has been created and recreated by the author.
When lighting conditions are
just right, however, a window
can also be a mirror. Literature
transforms human experience
and reflects it back to us, and in
that reflection we can see our
own lives and experiences as part
of the larger human experience.
Reading, then, becomes a means
of self-affirmation, and readers
often seek their mirrors in books.
(1990, p. ix)
heart and mind and then passed it
on in journal articles, textbooks,
conference presentations, conversations, and course assignments.
Dr. Sims Bishop had few mirrors, windows, and sliding glass
doors in her own interactions
with literature for youth (personal
communication). As a child, she,
too, remembers literature that
negatively depicted Blacks—The
Story of Little Black Sambo, for
example (Bannerman, 1899). A
college roommate, the late Patricia G. Gaines, introduced her to
Marguerite De Angeli’s Bright
April (1946). With this book,
Sims Bishop became aware of a
shift in the depiction of Blacks
in literature for youth. Later, in
graduate school, the publication of Virginia Hamilton’s Zeely
(1968) became, paradoxically,
her mirror, window, and sliding glass door. Dr. Sims Bishop
recalled Zeely as a part of an
emerging canon of African American children’s literature that
“spoke to her” and that she loved
the moment she read it (personal
communication).
As an emerging scholar of
African American children’s literature, I became aware of the
metaphor for reading children’s
literature and the power it conveyed in an article written by Dr.
Sims Bishop (1990) for Perspectives. Her words, so subtle yet
powerful, became a rallying cry of
sorts among academics, librarians,
critics, scholars, and reviewers
who advocated for the inclusion
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Profiles and Perspectives
November 2007
Vol. 85 ● No. 2 ●
Language Arts ●
Shadow and Substance contained a framework for analyzing
children’s literature written about
African Americans. This framework placed the literature in three
categories: social conscience,
melting pot, and culturally conscious. Books classified as having
a social conscience perspective positioned White children as
the primary implied reader. The
social conscience books presented
Blacks as a “problem” in that they
explored racial conflict often arising from desegregation efforts.
Blacks were also shown to be
exotic, different, or humorous; in
today’s parlance, they were “the
Other.” Melting pot books were
written for an integrated audience
and ignored the existence of any
cultural specifics in the African
American experience. The books
were culturally homogeneous and
only the illustrations connoted
“blackness.” They were decidedly assimilationist and nearly all
of the authors were White. The
authors of culturally conscious
books, unlike the authors of melting pot and social conscience
books, were primarily Black and
unabashedly considered Black
children the primary audience for
their works. These authors captured the language, cultures, and
ways of being that reflected an
intimate knowledge of African
Americans. Although Blacks were
the implicit and explicit audience
for culturally conscious books,
children of other races and ethnicities were welcome to share
the fictive worlds found in the
literature.
The impact of Shadow and
Substance can be found in numerous dissertations, articles, and
books examining not just African American literature for youth,
but also Asian Pacific American,
Latino/a, Native American, and
GBLTQ literature. For instance,
my dissertation depended heavily on the theoretical framework
found in Shadow and Substance as I examined The Brownies’ Book, a periodical for Black
children founded by W. E. B.
DuBois, Augustus Dill, and Jessie Fauset that was published
from 1920–1921. Shwu-Yi Leu’s
award-winning dissertation, The
Struggle to Become “Americans”: Historical and Contemporary Experiences of Asian Pacific
American Immigrants in Children’s and Young Adult Fiction,
1945–1999 (Leu, 2002), used the
framework advanced in Shadow
and Substance to examine picture books and novels depicting
Asian Pacific Americans. Ruth
Quiroa documented the biliteracy development of Latino/a kindergartners in her award-winning
dissertation, Literature as a Mirror: Analyzing the Oral, Written,
and Artistic Responses of Young
Mexican-Origin Children to Mexican American-themed Picture
Storybooks (Quiroa, 2004). In
this work, the books shared with
the students were selected with
the idea of cultural consciousness
as a central criterion. Michael
Cart and Christine Jenkins (2006)
modified the framework to create a history of GBLTQ literature
in the book The Heart Has Its
Reasons: Young Adult Literature
with Gay/Lesbian/Queer Content,
1969–2004.
Without a doubt, Shadow and
Substance is a classic. As long as
any group marked by a distinctive
feature(s) finds itself in literature created by those who are not
a part of the group, then Shadow
and Substance will remain a relevant and powerful analytic tool.
One would think that the
importance of African American
children’s literature for the aes-
thetic and intellectual growth of
youth would be apparent. Yet, its
role in the lives of youth has to be
justified on frequent occasions.
Some justification can be found
in the reader response studies that
detail the responses of children to
African American children’s literature. Early on, Sims Bishop
broke new ground in reader
response studies by documenting
the engagement of one African
American girl to African American children’s literature.
“STRONG BLACK GIRLS”:
A PIONEERING READER
RESPONSE STUDY
Girlhood can be wondrous,
and even more so if girls can
see affirming visions of themselves in textbooks, trade books,
media, popular culture, and high
art. Countless personal experiences observing Black girls
smile, touch, and clutch books in
their hands, and hold their heads
higher as they look at books illustrated by artists such as Faith
Ringgold, Jerry Pinkney, Leo
and Diane Dillon, and Kadir Nelson allowed me to understand the
impact of visual imagery. The
insights I gained from observing such reactions to illustrations were keenly influenced by
an article Sims Bishop (1983)
wrote, “Strong Black Girls: A
Ten Year Old Responds to Fiction about Afro-Americans.” The
study reported answers to three
questions: 1) Who is the primary
audience for books about AfroAmerican children? 2) How is the
concept of a unique Afro-American experience defined and dealt
with? 3) From what sociocultural
perspective have the books been
written? These questions guided
the analysis found in Shadow and
Substance and allowed for signif-
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issues of power, agency, identity, and interpersonal relationships are situated in the sharing
of literature.
Sims Bishop’s research was
published at a critical juncture.
A clear need existed for African American children’s literature, but not everyone concerned
with publishing children’s books
was convinced that a viable market had emerged for such stories, poetry, and nonfiction. Sims
Bishop’s research showed that
Osula’s book selection was circumscribed by the limited availability of children’s literature
about Blacks. Those who provided her with African American
literature found that the literature
was not readily available in bookstores. Sims Bishop would later
document the downward turn in
the publication of African American children’s literature in two
pivotal publications that convincingly detailed the return of the
“all-white world of children’s
books” (1983; 1985).
INTEGRATING BOOK
REVIEWS AND LITERARY
CRITICISM
Not everyone had to be convinced
of the value of African American
and, more generally, multicultural
literature. The editors of Horn
Book Magazine published occasional articles written by Sims
Bishop. Topics found in these articles included a review of comingof-age collections about youth
from parallel cultures (1995) and
an examination of the artistic oeuvre of Tom Feelings (1996b).
They also highlighted the emergence of literary and artistic
“dynasties” (1998) exemplified
by the Pinkney family members
(1996a); Walter Dean and Christopher Myers; Ann Jonas, Donald
Crews and Nina Crews; and John
and Javaka Steptoe.
As always, a quality of lyricism pervaded Sims Bishop’s
writing as evidenced by her introduction to a discussion about
Tom Feelings and his epic work,
The Middle Passage (1995).
Profiles and Perspectives
icant insights about the literature
(Sims, 1983).
The participant in the study,
Osula, was bright, inquisitive,
articulate, and a book lover.
Sims Bishop shared literature with her about Blacks and
gauged her responses to those
texts. She determined that Osula
enjoyed and preferred reading books about girls like her: a
strong Black girl. She responded
positively to illustrations that
were aligned with her heritage.
Osula also engaged favorably
with books that had appealing
language.
The 1970s and 1980s were
decades when Black women
sought to foreground the importance of gender in the struggles
for equality. While race was an
important factor in the status of
Blacks, gender issues in education, political representation and
participation, and involvement
in the workforce were also relevant. Historically, gender issues
among African Americans were
not an essential focus, although
many individuals such as Anna
Julia Cooper, Ida B. Wells, and
others spoke of and wrote about
the perspectives and strengths of
Black women who sought equity
and justice in U.S. social life in
the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Others, like Audre Lorde
and Michelle Wallace, emerged
during the mid-1970s to challenge male patriarchy. While
Sims Bishop’s response study
with its decided gender perspective may or may not have
evolved out of gender clashes, it
did serve as a precursor to others who would follow. Scholars, including Wanda Brooks,
Danell Edwards, Maisha Fisher,
and Jonda C. McNair, would
articulate the complex literacy
worlds of Black girls, where
I have walked on Goree Island,
off the coast of Dakar, Senegal,
marveling at the way the tranquil
beauty of the island belies its
painful history, and yet is a vital
part of it. I have visited the Slave
House, peered into the groundfloor dungeon cells designed for
holding captives, and toured the
luxurious upstairs living quarters reserved for their captors.
I have stood at the “Door of No
Return” and imagined what it
would feel like to walk through
that arched passageway, and be
rowed, in shackles, to a winged
monster waiting to swallow me
into its bowels and carry me
away—forever—from the only
life, the only family, the only
language, and the only place that
I had known. The experience was
profoundly moving.
(Sims Bishop, 1996b)
Sims Bishop’s stirring account
of Tom Feelings’s travels in
Guyana and Ghana, as he experienced what it was like to move
from a racialized society to societies in which those who looked
like him were in the majority,
is captured in the column. Further, Sims Bishop conveys with
incomparable care and insight
the unrelenting horror of the
Middle Passage, which some
refer to as the African Holocaust,
and Feelings’s artistry. Such articles are a perfect introduction to
understanding and engaging with
the book for those likely to share
it with youth.
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Profiles and Perspectives
November 2007
Vol. 85 ● No. 2 ●
Language Arts ●
BRINGING BLACK ARTISTRY
TO CLASSROOMS
Until recently, schools and public libraries were viewed by publishers as the primary markets
for children’s literature, including African American children’s
literature. Today, the consumer
market has vastly expanded the
importance of this body of literature. Teachers and librarians need
to be made aware of the literature, however, in order to share it
with students and to institutionalize its use in schools and libraries. Sims Bishop participated
in this vital imperative in many
ways, but especially through the
courses she taught.
Teaching is another core legacy of Sims Bishop. What it must
have felt like to sit in her classes
and listen as she captured your
imagination and fired your intellect! I attend her presentations at
conferences whenever possible,
and I invite her to write chapters
in books I edit because I continuously learn from her work. She
has also corrected me, as one
would expect a rigorous and caring teacher to do. For example, in
Teaching Multicultural Literature
in Grades K–8 (Harris, 1992), I
had misidentified Paul Laurence
Dunbar’s 1940 publication of Little Brown Baby (1968) as the first
children’s book written by an
African American. To my utter
mortification, I received a phone
call from Sims Bishop making
me aware of my error in a gentle and encouraging way. In subsequent publications, I noted the
error and thanked her for bringing it to my attention. One result
of my error and her correction
has been an almost obsessive zeal
on my part for fact-checking the
information included in my writings. I learned valuable lessons
through that experience and think
that my research skills improved
as a result.
I wanted to discover what
some of Sims Bishop’s former
students remembered most about
their courses and contacted a few.
Many of her students have carved
out stellar careers for themselves
at various universities. At the
core of their work is a respect
for her knowledge, instructional
demeanor, and willingness to
guide students’ attainment of their
scholarly voice. Mingshui Cai,
Jonda C. McNair, and Elizabeth
Marshall, professors at major universities throughout the country,
shared some of their memories.
FOLLOWING A MENTOR’S
FOOTSTEPS AND FORGING
A NEW PATH
Mingshui Cai, a professor at the
University of Northern Iowa,
collaborated with Sims Bishop
on several manuscripts and was
pleased to share aspects of her
influence on him and his work in
a personal communication to me
(quotes and comments that follow are based on that communication). Together, they addressed
some challenging questions about
multiculturalism and children’s
literature(for instance, how is
identity essentialized by race or
ethnicity, and what is the role of
social and cultural issues in literature discussions and instruction? Cai characterized her as the
“bellwether of the children’s literature program at Ohio State
[University] after Charlotte
Huck.” Sims Bishop also influenced his research and scholarship in the areas of diversity and
equity issues in children’s literature. For example, when he
wrote Multicultural Literature for
Children and Young Adults (Cai,
2002), he took on the mantle of
advocate. “Her scholarly works
in multicultural children’s literature, which are at the cutting
edge of the field, have enlightened and inspired many doctoral students, including myself,
to pursue the study of diversity
and equity issues in children’s literature.” His statement continues with an appreciation for her
teaching style: she “embodies the
fine qualities of an outstanding
educator.” Cai concludes by stating that Sims Bishop has a humanistic attitude towards her students
and treats them as if they were
close friends and co-inquirers in
academic pursuits. Equally important, he acknowledges her willingness to help them throughout their
professional careers.
Sims Bishop’s influence
extends to children and parents
in communities throughout the
country as her former students
conduct research that probes the
power of literature in their lives.
Jonda C. McNair, an assistant
professor at Clemson University, considered the fundamental
Sims Bishop’s idea that literature
is important to the lives of children and that children of color,
especially, need to find images
of themselves in their books
(personal communication). She
described a family literacy project, funded by a “Grant-in-Aid
Award” from the Research Foundation of NCTE, based on these
ideas as guiding principles. The
project was titled: “I Never Knew
There Were So Many Books
about Us: Parents and Children
Reading African American Children’s Literature Together.”
This project allowed me to examine what happened when ten
African American families—with
children in grades K–2—were
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Those parents, family members,
and children will continue the
legacy as they share the books
with others.
Similarly, Elizabeth Marshall, an assistant professor at
Simon Fraser University, considered herself fortunate to have
had the opportunity to enroll in
three courses taught by Sims
Bishop. Marshall’s comments
echo those of Cai and McNair as
she describes how her research
and teaching have been modeled after Sims Bishop’s. Equally
important, she found her schol-
arly voice with Sims Bishop’s
guidance.
Throughout my coursework,
Dr. Bishop pushed me to think
critically and to situate work in a
scholarly context. In her history
of children’s literature seminar,
we were asked to turn in weekly
response assignments. In these
responses, I attempted to find my
“scholarly” voice. Finally, near
the end of the semester, I received
a note from Dr. Bishop on one of
my assignments. I have kept the
paper from that seminar on which
she wrote, “I have been aware of
your efforts (successful!) to produce scholarly work in this class
. . . Good on ya!” When you received such a compliment from Dr.
Bishop, you knew you had earned
it. (personal communication)
Marshall’s recent publications
have been strongly influenced by
Sims Bishop, as evidenced in a
recently published paper on the
representation of girls in biographies that have received the
Coretta Scott King Awards.
Just as Sims Bishop continues
to encourage her students to teach
for engagement with literature,
she also moves them to accept the
stance that literature can reshape
human interactions. She pushes
herself to remain in the vanguard
of producing scholarly work that
helps achieve these goals. Her
scholarship over the past 25 years
is characterized by a rediscovery of historic texts written by
Blacks, including: Wonders: The
Best Children’s Poems of Effie
Lee Newsome (1999); a critical literary biography, Presenting
Walter Dean Myers (1990); and
Kaleidoscope: A Multicultural
Booklist for Grades K–8 (1994),
an annotated bibliography she
edited that continues to be cited
by scholars and teachers working
on rationales for their book selections. Her scholarly canon continues to grow with a long-awaited
follow-up to Shadow and Substance. That work, Free within
Ourselves: The Development of
African American Children’s Literature (2007), promises to influence a new generation of scholars
with its focus on the pursuits
and accomplishments of African
American artists and authors, as
they wrestled with the events and
attitudes that shaped their times
and their books.
Profiles and Perspectives
exposed to an abundance of
children’s books written by and
about African Americans . . . I
provided them [the families] with
more than 50 children’s books
such as Do Like Kyla [Johnson,
1990], Bippity Bop Barbershop
[Tarpley, 2002], Flossie and the
Fox [McKissack, 1996], Honey
I Love [Greenfield, 1978], and
Clean Your Room, Harvey Moon
[Cummings, 1994]. The parents
were thrilled to receive these
books, since none of them had
any idea that there were so many
African American children’s
books available. One parent described the workshops as a “book
buffet.” They passed on knowledge they gained and shared their
books with friends, family members, and co-workers. During
our workshops, I thought of Dr.
Bishop and realized that she had
probably never been to Anderson,
South Carolina, a small town
near Clemson University where
I am now teaching. However,
her influence is felt here in that
she is reaching individuals, most
importantly young black children,
whom she has never met because
of the impact of her work and
what she taught me. (personal
communication)
RECLAIMING A LITERARY
HERITAGE AND NAMING
NEW LEGACIES
Many of us awaited the publication of Free within Ourselves for
several years, placing orders for
the book on Amazon.com and
looking forward to seeing the
publication at conferences. Our
delight was palpable this year as
we called or emailed each other
to share the news that the book
was available for purchase.
Sims Bishop had long wanted
to complete a follow-up study
to Shadow and Substance that
would go backwards from 1965
to the beginnings of African
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American children’s literature
(personal communication). Her
research led her to many types
of texts, including church pamphlets. The rediscovery of church
pamphlets places the history of
African American children’s literature within the sacred realm,
as was generally the case with
children’s literature in the 18th
and 19th centuries. Tracing the
literature across centuries, her
research revealed certain themes
that were consistent across time,
including an emphasis on family, the pursuit of literacy, the
importance of the pursuit for
freedom and equality, and an
emphasis on the oral tradition.
Sims Bishop labeled this early
literature a “literature of necessity that was purposeful in its
attempts to counteract prevailing
images, that was a corrective”
(personal communication). She
also wanted to discover whether
similarities existed among
Black authors and illustrators
and to determine what “occurs
when Black writers write” (personal communication). In short,
she wanted to know about their
stories—their goals, themes,
approaches—and who the major
writers and artists were (personal
communication).
Sims Bishop deliberately
chose to define African American
children’s literature in the following way:
This book traces the development
of African American children’s
literature from its early roots to
the present. By African American
children’s literature, I mean books
written by African Americans, focused on African American people
and their life experiences, and
primarily intended for children
up to age fourteen (Sims Bishop,
2007, p. xi).
Seemingly, Sims Bishop has
decided that arguments about
authorship (Can Whites write
African American literature for
youth?), authenticity, insideroutsider perspectives, and the
White implied reader are not
productive. Instead of debating
these issues, she provides data
from the Cooperative Children’s
Book Center at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison that show
Whites and members of other
groups do in fact create Black
characters and stories about Black
experiences in percentages and
numbers that nearly equal those
for Black authors (Sims Bishop,
2007, p. xiii).
The book is comprehensive,
comprised of twelve chapters
ranging from an examination of
the earliest literary works to more
recent poetry, picture books, and
historical fiction. My penchant
for history led me directly to the
first chapter, “Before 1900: Sowing the Seeds of African American Children’s Literature.” I
found intriguing the introduction’s comparison of literary
seeds being sown in much the
same way that Jesus Christ discussed the sowing of seeds on
rocky or fertile ground.
The seeds of an African American
children’s literature were sown in
the soil of Black people’s struggles
for liberation, literacy, and survival. For those seeds to develop
into a body of written literature
for children, there first had to be,
among other things, a critical
mass of child readers, a collective
recognition of children as a reading audience distinct from adults,
and a significant number of writers willing to address their work
to that child readership. Since
many of these seeds fell upon the
rocks of slavery and among the
thorns of racism, these conditions
would not be met on any large
scale among African Americans
until well after emancipation.
Nevertheless, the record of African
Americans’ historical strivings for
literacy and education confirms
that some of the seeds fell on good
ground and began to blossom and
bear fruit (p. 1).
Sims Bishop documents this
rocky harvest by rediscovering and making known many of
the works that blossomed. For
example, many scholars of African American children’s literature may know about The Joy,
a children’s periodical from the
late eighteenth century, but fewer
of us may know about The Ivy,
another children’s magazine from
the same time period.
As she provides a chronological and thematic odyssey through
the literature, Sims Bishops continues the process of reintroducing
the reader to those who steadfastly
sought to create a space for African
American children’s literature. One
such writer is Lorenzo Graham
whose Town series, a collection of
novels about an African American
adolescent male who faces a host
of problems tinged by racism, was
recently republished, with Sims
Bishop providing an introduction
to the series. Sims Bishop’s new
volume also features an examination of the art in picture books,
a feature not included in Shadow
and Substance. She devotes three
chapters to a discussion about picture books, art, and illustrators
beginning with the historically
significant children’s magazine
The Brownies’ Book, and including discussions of Jacob Lawrence’s Harriet and the Promised
Land (1968) and the breakthrough
picture book Stevie (1969) by John
Steptoe. Other chapters focus on
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Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop’s
legacy continues with Free
within Ourselves. Her work, in
its newest form, reaches into the
past to create a new beginning.
She provides us with a mirror
that allows us to see reflections
of ourselves in African American
children’s literature, and offers
others a passport into African
American worlds.
References
Quiroa, R. (2004). Literature as a mirror:
Analyzing the oral, written, and artistic
responses of young Mexican-origin
children to Mexican American-themed
picture storybooks. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign.
Sims, R. (1982). Shadow and substance:
Afro-American experience in contemporary children’s fiction. Urbana, IL:
National Council of Teachers of English.
Sims, R. (1983). Strong black girls: A
ten year old responds to fiction about
Afro-Americans. Journal of Research
and Development in Education, 16(3),
21–28.
Bannerman, H. (1899). The story of Little
Black Sambo. London: Grant Richards.
Sims, R. (1983). What has happened
to the “all-white” world of children’s
books. Phi Delta Kappan, 64, 650–653.
Cai, M. (2002). Multicultural literature
for children and young adults. Westport, CT: Greenwood.
Sims, R. (1985). Children’s books about
blacks: A mid-eighties status report.
Children’s Literature Review, 8, 9–13.
Cart, M., & Jenkins, C. (2006). The heart
has its reasons: Young adult literature with gay/lesbian/queer content,
1969–2004. New York: Scarecrow.
Sims Bishop, R. (1990). Presenting Walter Dean Myers. New York: Twayne.
Cummings, P. (1994). Clean your room,
Harvey Moon. New York: Aladdin.
Sims Bishop, R. (1990). Mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors. Perspectives, 1(3), ix–xi.
De Angeli, M. (1946). Bright April.
Garden City, NY: Junior Literary
Guild/Doubleday.
Sims Bishop, R. (Ed.). (1994). Kaleidoscope: A multicultural booklist for
grades K-8. Urbana, IL: National Council
of Teachers of English.
Dunbar, P. L. (1968). Little Brown Baby.
New York: Dodd, Mead. (Original work
published in 1940)
Sims Bishop, R. (1995). Books from parallel cultures: Growing up is hard to do.
Horn Book Magazine, 71, 578–583.
Feelings, T. (1995). The middle passage:
Black cargo, white ships. New York:
Dial.
Sims Bishop, R. (1996a). The Pinkney
family: In the tradition. Horn Book
Magazine, 72, 42–50.
Greenburg, P. (2002). Oh Lord, I wish
I was a buzzard. New York: Chronicle.
(Original work published 1968)
Sims Bishop, R. (1996b). Tom Feelings
and the middle passage. Horn Book
Magazine, 72, 436–452.
Greenfield, E. (1978). Honey, I love. New
York: Crowell.
Sims Bishop, R. (1998). Following in
their father’s paths. Horn Book Magazine, 74, 249–255.
Hamilton, V. (1968). Zeely. New York:
Macmillan.
Harris, V. J. (Ed.). (1992). Teaching
multicultural literature in grades K–8.
Norwood, MA: Christopher-Gordon.
Johnson, A. (1990). Do like Kyla. New
York: Orchard.
Lawrence, J. (1968). Harriet and the
Promised Land. New York: Windmill.
Leu, S. (2002). The struggle to become
“Americans”: Historical and contemporary experiences of Asian Pacific
American immigrants in children’s and
young adult fiction, 1945–1999. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
McKissack, P. (1986). Flossie and the fox.
New York: Dial.
Profiles and Perspectives
the artistry of Monetta Sleet, Tom
Feelings, Ashley Bryan, Leo and
Diane Dillon, Jerry Pinkney, Pat
Cummings, and several others.
She also heralds the second and
third waves of illustrators, many
of them related to the earlier artists
(for instance Nina Crews, Brian
Pinkney, and Javaka Steptoe), who
have advanced the artistic boundaries of books for children.
Fiction and information
books comprise the topics for the
remaining chapters. Sims Bishop
notes the early and continuous
impact of Virginia Hamilton,
Walter Dean Myers, and Mildred
Taylor while also acknowledging
the newest generation of writers,
such as Christopher Paul Curtis,
Angela Johnson, and Jacqueline
Woodson , who, like their predecessors, challenge readers in traditional and new ways.
I enquired about what Sims
Bishop thought was still missing from African American children’s literature. Ever the teacher
and scholar, she praised the small
sampling of fantasy literature,
such as Jerdine Nolen’s picture
books, but pondered whether or
not the “big fantasy novel trilogies” were absolutely needed. She
also urged the creation of more
humorous works in the tradition
of Walter Dean Myers, Pat Cummings, or Christopher Paul Curtis.
She has challenged writers and
illustrators to continue what they
do best, but also to recognize that
today’s children need something
artistically different as well. How
fitting that she provides us with
“homework,” the unfinished business of creating a literature that
explores new terrain and captures
the “hopescape” of a people.
Sims Bishop, R. (1999). Wonders: The
best children’s poems of Effie Lee Newsome. Honesburg, PA: Boyds Mill Press.
Sims Bishop, R. (2007). Free within
ourselves: The development of African
American children’s literature. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Tarpley, N. (2002). Bippity bop barbershop. Boston: Little Brown.
Steptoe, J. (1969). Stevie. New York:
Harper and Row.
Violet J. Harris is professor of
Curriculum and Instruction at the
University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign.
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