To Be a Drum - Softcover

Coleman is an Albert Whitman author.

Grade 2-4AThis ambitious picture book celebrates the creativity and individuality of African Americans, beginning with the origin of human life when "the rhythm of the earth beat for the first people," filled the air with spirit, and flew into their bodies. This beat enables them to create actual and, possibly, symbolic drums. When the people are enslaved and carried to a new land where their "drums" are taken from them, they still feel the earth's beat in their bodies and become "living drums," and all of their skills and talents become symbolic instruments. Accomplishments in science, the arts, the military, and the Civil Rights Movement are referred to and the account ends with an exhortation to readers to find out how to beat out their own rhythms of the earth. The art is executed with thick paint, fabric collage, old buttons, fibers, clay and sand, and shreds of old baskets. The double-spread pictures run off the pages and compositions often swirl endlessly with no place for the eye to rest. Sometimes the backgrounds almost overpower the foregrounds. Images change from simple patchwork, to a misty scene, to thickly painted portraits, to simple washes. The picture of the creation of life with bold black outlines anchoring the portraits seems the most successful. Some readers may enjoy the poetic, inspirational text, but others may find the insistence on the drum metaphor and the relentlessly energetic art a bit overbearing.AMarilyn Iarusso, New York Public Library
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