Children’s Book Festival Traveling Exhibit @ Princeton Public Library

As part of the Children’s Book Festival, the library has invited Miami University’s, “Telling a People’s Story: African American Children’s Illustrated Literature” Traveling exhibit to the library from October 1-30.

“Telling a People’s Story” is the first traveling exhibit devoted to the art found within the pages of African American children’s illustrated literature. The exhibition emphasizes the strength of the illustrations as visual narrative representations of the African-American experience and sheds light on the long-neglected world of African-American authors and illustrators in the pantheon of children’s literature.

This exhibit showcases African-American children’s illustrated literature produced by some of the biggest names in the field. A few of the well-known illustrators represented include Ashley Bryan, Jerry Pinkney, Jan Spivey-Gilchrist, E.B. Lewis and Kadir Nelson, among others. For more information about the artists, watch their videos that were featured in the original exhibition. Overall, there are 130 works from 33 artists featured within the exhibit, many of which have received top awards and honorable mentions from major literary organizations, including the John Newbery Medal, the Randolph Caldecott Award and the Coretta Scott King Awards. The selections include paintings, pastels, drawings and mixed media works.

This exhibition was 3 years in the making and included guidance and contributions from librarians, scholars, children’s book authors and illustrators. As Rudine Sims Bishop stated in her seminal 1990 article, Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors, “Literature transforms human experience and reflects it back to us, and in that reflection we can see our own lives and experiences as part of the larger human experience.”  Until the 1960s, and mostly the 1970s, African-American children rarely saw themselves depicted in children’s books from the perspective of African-American authors and illustrators. Telling A People’s Story is a celebration of the power of illustrated children’s books that showcases their story.  

The exhibit is on loan from the Miami University Art Museum (Oxford, OH). For more information on the exhibit, visit this link.