Cornrows /

Gr. 2-6. As Sister and Mama and Great-Grammaw braid each other's hair, the girl and her little brother learn the history and significance of cornrows.

This is a welcome reissue of a classic of early African American picture books, first published in 1979, for which Byard won the Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award. A lengthy text by today's standards, narrated by Shirley Ann, or Sister, describes the origins and the meaning of the cornrows Great-Grammaw braids in Mama's hair. Great-Grammaw explains, in dialect: "A long, long time ago, in a land called Africa," people represented the "spirit that lives inside of you" with "symbols of courage, an honor, an wisdom, an love, an strength." Byard's powerful black-and-white illustrations capture everything from the horrors of the Middle Passage to the sophistication of ancient Yoruba culture to the warmth of Sister's family life. Martha V. ParravanoSeptember/October 2023 p.108 (c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Using the cornrows hairstyle as an occasion for a paean to black culture, African and American, is a fine idea; but Yarbrough's execution lacks the humble virtues of the hairdo. First, though, comes the question of an audience: though the publishers set an eight-to-twelve age level and readers would have to be that old to pick up on even a reasonable proportion of the 22 names Yarbrough spins off toward the end (. . . DuBois, Garvey, Nzinga, Baldwin, Mary Bethune. . .), the book has a standard picture-book format and the framing story is told at a five-to-eight-year-old level: While Great-Grammaw does Mama's and the children's hair in cornrows, narrator Shirley Ann (or Sister) and her little brother Mike (or Brother, or Me Too) ask questions and Mama tells them all about the heritage the cornrows represent. The rhymed lines that Yarbrough puts into Mama's and Great-Grammaw's mouths can be stiff and unconvincing (""I delight in telling you, my child--/ Yes, you please me when you ask it--. . ."") and their later, chanting evocation can be too stagily poetical ("". . . where they flickered on the pyre. . ."") or muddily abstract. This is at its worst in a long passage about the people of Africa ""working through"" a spirit ""to give life meaning. An to give praise,"" and about symbols ""taking form"" as sculptured ware, ritual masquerade, or braided hair. Where the mood and the message are counted more important than such reservations, Byard's drawings will be found in conformity with both. But perhaps the words would work best in a dramatic or choral presentation at a school program. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.