Reviews for Brown angels

The average rating for Brown angels based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-03-15 00:00:00 Brian Dunbar This book has a special place in my heart. It encompasses memories from my childhood, my love of poetry, vintage photography, and history. When I bought this book a long time ago, I was immediately touched by the photos of various old fashioned African American children taken at least a century ago. I wondered who they were, where they lived, and what ultimately happened to them. A couple of the baby photos were my favorites. They both look like serious miniature adults. Later the poems moved me. The author Walter Dean Myers writes at the book's beginning that over time he discovered and purchased many vintage photographs of African American children at antique shops, flea markets, auction houses, and from museum collections. So like me the children in his book are unknown to him, lost to history. In the cases of some of the poems, he succeeded in matching the mood of a poem with a photograph(s). He uses both standard English and black slightly southern dialect. Why he did this is probably because many of the children in the photos more than likely lived in the southern US because the majority of the photos were taken a few decades prior to the great migration of many African Americans from the agrarian South to the industrial North. There are other personal reasons I love this book which are related to my own family history and childhood. I won't mention them here since I planned only a short review This book with both its photos and sometimes jaunty and dancing poems are so touching to me. If you love old photography and verse which are a celebration of African American life and just life and childhood in general, I recommend this award winning book. Love That Boy, which is one of the poems contained in Brown Angels, can be read at the link:

Review # 2 was written on 2016-08-10 00:00:00 Cory Carter Beautiful. I'm white, and I still fell in love with every one of these children. And I've often enjoyed Myers work and wish he were more widely read. Of course, one of his poems is famous enough to have inspired Love That Dog which is, imo, another five-star book.