The Baby on the Way

This is a beautiful picture book featuring a black family living in a city. Jamal, a pre-tween asks his grandmother if she has ever been a child. She tells him that indeed, she was a child once and, at one time was even a baby on the way! Curious, Jamal asks her to tell more. His grandmother describes her own mother's pregnancy and her place in the family. His grandmother is the youngest of 10 children and she describes the joyous fanfare in preparation of her birth. Beautiful pictures illustrate the story; the characters' faces are delightfully expressive. Jamal's grandmother describes events from her early girlhood and tells Jamal that one day, he may have a child or grandchild who will ask him if he was ever the baby on the way. A loving story about the connection of family and traditions that will find a permanent place in the hearts of readers.

Good picture books featuring African-American characters (particularly contemporary ones) are few and far between. They appear in spurts and splutters in the marketplace and unless they garner a prestigious award of some sort they sink back down into obscurity despite their own brilliance. When I consider the sheer swath of mediocre picture books featuring white children that take attention away from the really wonderful picture books featuring black children... it's enough to make a children's librarian physically ill. Now I'm a big Karen English fan. I consider her book, "Speak To Me (And I Will Listen Between the Lines)" to be perhaps the best little-read children's picture book available on the market today. My admiration was due in part to her own brilliant writing, and in part the illustrations of the accomplished Amy Bates. Now English has written another moving title that jumps with aplomb between the past and the present. She has also, however, been paired with illustrator Sean Qualls and the result is less brilliant than it might have been. A great book that fills a definite need, I regret that I can't recommend it as heartily as "Speak to Me" due to my own personal problems with its accompanying pictures. While gardening on their apartment building's rooftop garden, a question occurs to Jamal that had never quite come to him before. Was his grandmother ever a little girl? Ever a baby? To his evident surprise his grandma says that she was most definitely a baby once. Heck, she was once the baby on the way. With that Jamal begins to hear the story of how his grandmother was born. She was the tenth child her mother birthed and was born on a large family farm. A midwife had to be sent for and her father even left his plowing in the field to attend to the birth. When at last she was born, Jamal's grandma was the baby of the family. "You know, my feet hardly touched the ground my whole first two years. I was carried everywhere. Just passed around from person to person". And when Jamal has heard the story and the only sound left is the wail of a siren somewhere, he wonders if someone will ever ask HIM if he was once the baby on the way. Grandma says she hopes someone will and then proceeds to tell him the story of his own birth as well. In many ways, "The Baby On the Way" reminded me of another rural African-American midwifery title, "Missy Violet and Me" by Barbara Hathaway. Obviously "Missy Violet" is a book intended for older children, but the two work together especially well. In her New York Times Review, Jenny Allen noted that perhaps when Jamal's grandma says, "should you live so long" when he asks if anyone will ever wonder if he was a baby, she may be referring to "the violence that snatches the lives of so many African-American men". Whether or not this was English's intent, it does add a kind of poignancy to the story that it might not have had otherwise. Such multiple interpretations attest to English's