Debbie Levy (The Year of Goodbyes) leads readers on a journey of a song spanning hundreds of years and still sung today, accompanied by uplifting images by Vanessa Brantley-Newton (Let Freedom Sing).
This involving picture book traces the song's roots from a spiritual sung by enslaved people ("I'll Be All Right"), through Charles Albert Tindley's church in Philadelphia, circa 1900 ("I'll Overcome Someday"), the 1940s protests at a tobacco factory (the song "I Will Overcome"--with a different melody and words from Tindley's--morphed into "We Will Overcome") and to a 1957 party where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was guest of honor and serenaded by Pete Seeger--in a form closer to what we know the song as today. Levy's narrative evokes the feeling of lyrics. She describes the party honoring Dr. King, who "took the song with him in his heart/ everywhere he traveled./ The words changed a little/ But the spirit stayed the same."
The book's design emphasizes the refrain of the song in its different incarnations, which serves as a caption for each illustration. Brantley-Newton's images often provide much of the historic context (until readers reach the thorough timeline at book's end), and gracefully flow from the cotton fields to Tindley's church to the 1960s sit-ins and a moving penultimate spread depicting a huge crowd singing to President Barack Obama on Inauguration Day. Detailed resources will point young readers to related reading and videos of the song performed by the likes of Marian Anderson. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness