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The Jones Family Express
By Javaka Steptoe
Award-Winning Children's Book
Illustrator debuts as both author and illustrator in new book
New York, NY--In his debut as both author and
illustrator, Javaka Steptoe combines humor and warmth in
The Jones Family Express
(Lee & Low), the story of an
African-American boy who wants to make a special gift for his
aunt when she comes to visit. The book is a warm and joyous
celebration of one boy's love for his family. Javaka Steptoe's
inventive collage illustrations, bursting with color and energy,
bring his story to life for families everywhere.
For as long as Steven can remember, Aunt
Carolyn has traveled around the world, and she always sends him
postcards from the places she visits. those postcards make
Steven feel special. This summer Aunt Carolyn is coming to the
annual block party and Steven wants to do something to make his
aunt feel special too. He is determined to give her the perfect
gift, but with little time and money, he worries that he won't
be able to find the right thing. Just when Steven begins to lose
hope, he discovers a surprising inspiration--and learns that the
best gifts of all come straight from the heart.
Critics have hailed
The Jones Family Express
as "engaging" and a "promising new
direction" for Steptoe, who has won countless awards for
his imaginative and original illustrations. the Book is
available for purchase from the publisher Lee & Low (www.leeandlow.com),
Amazon.com, and traditional bookstores. "Steptoe tells a warm story about a
realistic African-American family that bickers and loves even as
it is selfish and generous. the mix of materials is inventive,
and the skillful compositions are filled with action, palpable
affection, and the pride Steven finds in his own
creativity" -- BookList
More Praises for The
Jones Family Express
In this down-to-earth Brooklyn tale, young
Steven awaits a visit from his world-traveling Aunt Carolyn.
"Once, when I was three, I hid in her suitcase so she would
take me with her," the middle-school boy explains. "She
was so tickled she promised to send me a postcard from every place
she went until I was old enough to travel with her." Aunt
Carolyn has kept her word, and Steven wants to thank her with a
truly original gift. When he cannot find a suitable present at a
drugstore or a Jamaican culture shop on Nostrand Avenue, a
secondhand toy train inspires him: "The paint was peeling off
and some of the windows were broken, but I could see it had
potential." Like the snapshots Steven glues onto the toy
locomotive's windows to transform it into "The Jones Family Express," the elements of Steptoe's artwork combine into
layered compositions: his rough-hewn collages of an
African-American family appear against a background of scattered
postcards with exotic stamps and jokey cursive messages. . .The
hero's, labor intensive expression of love is the heart of this
book."
--Publishers Weekly
Steptoe makes his authorial debut in this
engaging story about a boy's special relationship with his aunt.
Every summer, Aunt Carolyn goes traveling. Now she's returning for
the family's annual block party and Steven searches for a gift to
welcome her home. Throughout, he frames text as if in a postcard
or letter and set against a backdrop of his signature cut-paper
and mixed media collage. In the opening spread, photographs and
postcards are scattered about on the left, the boy sits with
snapshots pulled from the box beside him, all from his aunt's
travels. As the tale unfolds, family members and neighborhood
folks are introduced, including Steven's grandmother, with whom he
lives and Jamaican-born shopkeeper Ruby, whose store comes alive
with colorful fabric accents and cut-out photos of beaded
necklaces, amber stones, and African art. His characters' faces
infuse the compositions with an unexpected realism. in the end,
Steven surprises Aunt Carolyn with a gift that comes straight from
the heart. And she, in turn, surprises Steven with a gift of her
own. A promising new direction for Steptoe.
--Kirkus Reviews
The family closeness and comaraderie are
lovingly communicated, as are the family foibles (Uncle Charlie
eats off other people's plates, Grandad has a secret barbecue
recipe everyone knows, etc.). . . . The art is emotionally vibrant
and energetically rendered.
--Bulletin of the Center for
Children's Books
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Javaka Steptoe is an eclectic young
artist, designer, and illustrator, building a national
reputation as an outstanding contributor to the genre of
children's literature. His debut work,
In Daddy's Arms I Am
Tall: African American Celebrating Fathers, earned him the
Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award, a nomination for
Outstanding Children's Literature Work at the 1998 NAACP Image
Awards, a finalist ranking for the Bluebonnet Award for
Excellence in Children's Books, and countless other honors. His
most recent works,
Do you Know What I'll Do authored by
Carlotte Zolotow and
A Pocketful of Poems authored by
Nikki Grimes, received starred reviews from both Publishers
Weekly and the ALA Booklist. Contact: Feleicia Pride / Literary Pride /
443-415-5600 / literarypride@hotmail.com
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Once a model and inspiration for his late
father, award winning author/illustrator John Steptoe, Javaka
Steptoe has established himself as an outstanding illustrator in
his own right. Utilizing everyday objects, from aluminum plates
to pocket lint, and sometimes illustrating with a jigsaw and
paint, he delivers reflective and thoughtful collage creations
filled with vitality, playful energy, and strength. For Steptoe,
"collage is a means of survival. It is how Black folks
survived four hundred years of oppression, taking the scraps of
life and transforming in their own lives."
As both an artist and educator, he challenges
traditional notions of Black art, emphasizing the richness of
our collective past through his use of family as a recurring
theme and centerpiece. Steptoe explains, "I want my
audience no matter what their background, to be able to enter
into my world and make connections with comparable experiences
in their own lives.
Having earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts from
The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, Steptoe
is very committed to children's education, making appearances at
various schools libraries, museums, and conferences across the
country, including the American Library Association, the
International Association, and Reading Is Fundamental, Inc.
Javaka Steptoe currently lives in Brooklyn, NY and may be
contacted for school visits or artist/author talks via fax at
718-363-2361, or info@javaka.com,
or www.javaka.com* *
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1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus
Created
By Charles C. Mann
I’m
a big fan of Charles Mann’s previous
book
1491:
New Revelations of the Americas Before
Columbus, in which he
provides a sweeping and provocative
examination of North and South America
prior to the arrival of Christopher
Columbus. It’s exhaustively researched
but so wonderfully written that it’s
anything but exhausting to read. With
his follow-up,
1493, Mann has taken it to a
new, truly global level. Building on the
groundbreaking work of Alfred Crosby
(author of
The Columbian Exchange and, I’m
proud to say, a fellow Nantucketer),
Mann has written nothing less than the
story of our world: how a planet of what
were once several autonomous continents
is quickly becoming a single,
“globalized” entity.
Mann not only talked to countless
scientists and researchers; he visited
the places he writes about, and as a
consequence, the book has a marvelously
wide-ranging yet personal feel as we
follow Mann from one far-flung corner of
the world to the next. And always, the
prose is masterful. In telling the
improbable story of how Spanish and
Chinese cultures collided in the
Philippines in the sixteenth century, he
takes us to the island of Mindoro whose
“southern coast consists of a number of
small bays, one next to another like
tooth marks in an apple.” We learn how
the spread of malaria, the potato,
tobacco, guano, rubber plants, and sugar
cane have disrupted and convulsed the
planet and will continue to do so until
we are finally living on one integrated
or at least close-to-integrated Earth.
Whether or not the human instigators of
all this remarkable change will survive
the process they helped to initiate more
than five hundred years ago remains,
Mann suggests in this monumental and
revelatory book, an open question. |
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Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in
America
By Melissa V.
Harris-Perry
According to the
author, this society has historically exerted
considerable pressure on black females to fit into one
of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the
Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless
Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to
white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of
those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the
relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable
temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as
an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the
characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television
shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.
Professor Perry
points out how the propagation of these harmful myths
have served the mainstream culture well. For instance,
the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for
black females to feel a maternal instinct towards
Caucasian babies.
As for the source
of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their
own bodies during slavery given that they were being
auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless,
it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate
the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate
indiscriminately.
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update 4 October 2011
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