How God Fix Jonah - Hardcover

Graham, Lorenz

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1563976986 ISBN 13: 9781563976988

Publisher: Boyds Mills Press, 2000

Synopsis

"Utterly delightful" is how Zora Neal Hurston described this classic book when it was first published in 1946. Long out of print, Lorenz Graham's beautiful collection of Bible stories, told in the idiom of West Africa, is available again in an expanded edition newly illustrated by Ashley Bryan.

About this title

About the Author:

Lorenz Graham (1902-1989) was a pioneer in African American literature. His books include South Town, North Town, and Whose Town?, a trilogy of novels that were among the first to provide an honest portrayal of the lives of African Americans.

Ashley Bryan is the illustrator of more than thirty titles, many of them with texts he also wrote, retold, or selected. His books have been richly acclaimed and highly honored. Beat the Story Drum, Pum-Pum won the Coretta Scott King Award, and four more of his titles have been selected Coretta Scott King Honor Books. Mr. Bryan lives on a small island off the coast of Maine.

From Booklist:

Gr. 3-5, younger and older for reading aloud. The son of an African Methodist Episcopal minister in California, Graham taught in a missionary school in Liberia in the 1920s. He wrote this collection of biblical story-poems, which he published in 1946, in the voices of West African teachers and students. Now the collection has been reissued in a handsome volume with dramatic, new, full-page block prints by Ashley Bryan. The stories, great for reading aloud, have the simplicity and rhythm of the oral tradition. Both colloquial and poetic, they bring the holy into daily life. There's Noah ("God Wash the World and Start Again"), Solomon ("Wise Sword Find True Mommy"), Ruth, Samson, and many others. There are also a few selections from the New Testament, among them, "Make glad all people / God's pican be born in Bethlehem." The word pican , with its racist associations to picaninny, may be a problem with some readers, but as Graham explains in his introduction, the original word, meaning baby, son, or child, was used with great tenderness up and down the West African coast. It would be a shame to deprive today's children of this newly illustrated collection, endorsed by leading black authors, educators, and political leaders, because of the occasional use of this word. Most beautiful is the story of the Prodigal Son, told with a dramatic simplicity that's just right for readers' theater: the wastrel son's return and celebration, the good son's complaint to his father ("I work, I work, I work, I never left you. All the time you never kill one small goat for me. How you do me so?"), and the moving reply ("He was dead and now he live. He ain't got nothin. And he hungry"). A book to share across generations. Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About this edition

• Publisher: Boyds Mills Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 1563976986
• ISBN 13: 9781563976988
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 160
• Illustrator: Bryan Ashley