Saturday, December 4, 2010

Her Stories: African American Folktales, Fairy Tales, and True Tales told by Virginia Hamilton


Genre: Folktales and Fairytales

Honors: Publishers Weekly Best Book, ALA Notable/Best Books, Coretta Scott King Award/Honors

Review: The illustrations in this collection are the highlight of the stories.  They are interesting and detailed and allow the reader to escape into a fantastical fairyland.  The stories are very creative and unique and transport the reader to a different culture.  Each story has an African-American woman as the main character and is written in a way that feels as if one is being told a story passed down from many generations. There are five main categories of stories and include true tales of real African-American women.  This collection is rich with history and culture and is sure to be a favorite book for readers. 

Opinion:  It took a little while for me to get into these stories.  They are very different than fairly tales I have read in the past and it is not always easy to understand the conclusion of the tales.  My favorite part of the compilation is actually the "True Tales" section where the reader learns about African-American women in different time periods and different situations such as the Civil War and during times of slavery.  The images are absolutely gorgeous and are done by a famous husband and wife artist couple. 


Ideas:  Make this part of a display during Black History Month.  It can be used as part of a lesson where students take fairly tales and transform them to fit their own culture.  These are examples that can be used.  The images in this book can be used as inspiration for art classes, as noted a famous artist couple created them and the images alone make the book fantastic. 

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