The Great Migration: An American Story Book

Around the time of WWI, large numbers of African Americans began leaving their homes in the rural South in search of employment in the industrial cities of the North. In 1940, Lawrence chronicled their journey of hope in a flowing narrative sequence of paintings."This stirring picture book brings together the sixty panels of Lawrence's epic narrative Migration series, which he created in 1940-1941. They tell of the journey of African-Americans who left their homes in the South around World War I and traveled in search of better lives in the northern industrial cities. Lawrence is a storyteller with words as well as pictures: his captions and introduction to this book are the best commentary on his work. A poem at the end by Walter Dean Myers also reveals [as do the paintings] the universal in the particulars." ––BL.

Notable Children's Books of 1994 (ALA)
1993 Books for Youth Editors' Choices (BL)
1994 Teachers' Choices (IRA)
Notable 1994 Childrens' Trade Books in Social Studies (NCSS/CBC)
1994 Carter G. Woodson Outstanding Merit Book (NCSS)
1994 Books for the Teen Age (NY Public Library)

BookList

This stirring picture book (published in conjunction with the Museum of Modern Art and the Phillips Collection) brings together the 60 panels of Lawrence's epic narrative "Migration" series, which he created in the years 1940-41. They tell of the journey of African Americans who left their homes in the South around the time of World War I and traveled in search of work and better lives in the northern industrial cities. Lawrence is a storyteller with words as well as pictures: his captions and his own 1992 introduction to this book are the best commentary on his work. "To me, migration means movement," he says, and the rhythmic pictures show people--alone and together--leaving, walking, waiting, working, traveling the route to possibility. The sequence isn't linear; as in family stories, the pictures keep circling back to what they left behind. The story is both personal and elemental: Lawrence heard about the migration from his own family, and the paintings have an immediacy that pulls you right into the frames, so that you feel you're there with the child in line at the railway station or with the woman in a tenement reading a letter from home. The repeated motifs in simple shapes and bright primary colors express the common history of ordinary people; the refrain "and the migrants kept coming" still applies today. A poem at the end by Walter Dean Myers also reveals the universal in the particulars of the "small rope-tied case" and the "food that will not last the long journey." Older readers may want to go from this book to the large-size reproductions and the essays in the adult art book "Jacob Lawrence: The Migration Series". Many will want to see the exhibition of these paintings that is currently touring the country.