A Spiritual Journey

Kadir Nelson

The hero of Baby Bear by Kadir Nelson is lost and trying to find his way home. Young children may read the book literally; older children (and adults) will recognize the larger journey. Baby Bear does not search in order to be reconciled with his mother or father; he is on a journey that tests his mettle. And he must make it alone.

Never do readers feel that Baby Bear is in peril. Mountain Lion, Moose, Ram and Owl number among those who offer assurance and wisdom to Baby Bear along the way, but he must make his way on his own. Thus, this picture book stands apart from others that feature a solo character who's lost.

Kadir Nelson revealed in an interview for Kirkus Reviews that one of the most arresting images in the book--Baby Bear's conversation with Owl--had its seeds in Laura Amy Schlitz's 2008 Newbery acceptance speech (for her Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!). "She described encountering this bear in the forest and the moonlight ‘poured into the clearing like a giant bowl of milk,’" he recalled. "It was such a powerful image, so visceral that I couldn't get it out of my head." He didn't yet have the idea for Baby Bear, but he says, "that's the image that inspired the scene of Baby Bear and the owl in the clearing."

After that encounter with Owl, Baby Bear looks up at the moon, and his face commands the entire two-page spread; readers see the moon reflected back in his eyes. We can see there, in that painting, that Baby Bear knows he will be all right. He is filled with the serenity of quiet confidence. And he does indeed find his way home.

A 50th Anniversary of a Dream

Monday is Martin Luther King Day, and 2013 marks the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where Dr. King delivered his historic "I Have a Dream" speech. How do we make the impact of his words resonate for young people?

Kadir Nelson's glorious images in I Have a Dream (Schwartz & Wade/Random House) accompany the closing passages of Dr. King's speech. These are the most resonant lines, the ones adults hear in our heads when we think of his words. Nelson takes Dr. King's refrain and brings it home to children growing up today. With a portrait of Dr. King's own four children, and with the image for his dream that "little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers" in what resembles a game of Ring-Around-the-Rosy, Nelson removes any background or scenery so that the children could be of any time or place. (The book includes a transcription and recording of the full speech.)

Andrea Davis Pinkney

Andrea Davis Pinkney's Hand in Hand: Ten Black Men Who Changed America, illustrated by Brian Pinkney, focuses on other courageous men who helped Dr. King get to that historic day, August 28, 1963. They include A. Philip Randolph, one of Pinkney's chosen 10, who organized the march, and who also plays a key role in Tanya Lee Stone's Courage Has No Color: The True Story of the Triple Nickles: America's First Black Paratroopers. Randolph's plans to organize a similar strike in 1941 resulted in President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signing the Fair Employment Act, without which the Triple Nickles likely would not have formed.

All three books demonstrate how many people struggled--and continue to struggle--to realize the promise of Dr. King's dream.

This article first appeared in Shelf Awareness for Readers.