Saturday, February 14, 2009

We Are The Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball by Kadir Nelson

Hello All,

What an outstanding book We Are the Ship is. The illustrations are absolutely amazing, I can't get over how beautiful they are. The text is wonderful too; it gives a lot of information in a very interesting, conversational way. I couldn't quite name the style, but the author did that for me in his Author's Note: "I chose to present the voice of the narrator as a collective voice, the voice of every player, the voice of we." It's perfect for this book.

I knew very little about the Negro League before reading this book, but I have always loved baseball. In Detroit, the Detroit Tigers have been playing a game every year the last few years in honor of the Negro League, wearing the uniform of the Detroit Stars for that game. Despite this, I had no idea how popular the League was in its heyday, with both black and white fans, and how it was acknowledged for a very long time that the Negro League players were every bit as good, and some better, than the white players playing major league baseball.

In addition to both the 2009 Coretta Scott King Awards for author (winner) AND illustrator (honor), this book also won the 2009 Robert F. Sibert Medal from the American Library Association. "The Sibert Medal honors the author(s) and illustrator(s) of the most distinguished informational book published during the preceding year."

I can't recommend this stunningly beautiful book enough to all ages, both for the illustrations and for the writing!

Happy Reading!
Patti

1 comment:

pattinase (abbott) said...

I as looking for some novels set in Las Vegas and what comes up on google but a list you compiled in Romeo. How are you?