Beautiful Blackbird

In his illustrations, Ashley Bryan has explored a wide range of media, and in Blackbird he uses paper collage to a magical effect that will no doubt inspire readers to many home craft projects. In addition to his prolific career as a children's book author and illustrator, Bryan is a long standing scholar of African American poetry and African folklore, an emeritus professor of Dartmouth College, and a well-regarded painter. He has also travelled the world as an oral storyteller, book in hand, introducing children world wide to a love for reading and the joy of hearing the story on the page. The message of Blackbird is that all living creatures are beautiful. Though different from one another, children (of all ages) should take pride in their individuality and unique beauty.

The Reader from Texas could not be more wrong. This is so far from being a "racist" book that the criticism doesn't even make sense. This is an incredibly beautiful story that, emphatically, CANNOT be reduced to a "skin color" story --- it's a metaphor for any and every sort of difference, and how sharing what we have makes us all more beautiful. This is a very simple yet moving story, and to criticize it because the bird is "only admired for being black" is to miss the point. To quote C.S. Lewis in another context, someone so blind who could read this book as racist "could look all over the sky at high noon on a clear day and not see the sun." Ashley Bryan is a genius, a consummate story-teller --- I have seen him perform many, many times -- and I have never seen anyone better able to bring together, in complete joy, audiences of every color of the rainbow and every age. A beautiful, beautiful book!

No picture book could possibly proclaim that "Black is beautiful" any better than this. A splendid mélange of color and cut outs, "Beautiful Blackbird" is the story of how the birds of the world got their black spots and stripes. It's not too dissimilar from Rudyard Kiplings Just-So story of "How the Leopard Got Its Spots" in this way. When all the multi-colored birds of Africa beg blackbird (the most beautiful of all the birds) to paint some black on them, the able creature readily agrees. Thus, the world today is filled with birds of every shape and color, all touched by black in some way.No need to go digging for a metaphor here. The chorus sung by the happy aviary ranges from, "Blackbird is the most beautiful one" to "Black is beautiful, uh-huh!". And these birds know how to dance too. Here's a lyric from their party: "Tip tap toe to the left, spin around, Toe tap tip to the right, stroke the ground. Wings flip-flapping as you glide, Forward and backward in a Show Claws Slide".As always, I must warn you that if you intend to read this book to children you must have at least one musical or rhythmic bone in your body. This book sports a bouncy catchy beat. To deny it is to deny much of the nature of the book itself. A great resource for those parents that want to make it very clear from the beginning that black is the most beautiful color of them all. It's a color readily shared, though, as Blackbird himself points out, "Just remember, whatever I do, I'll be me and you'll be you".