The library in the woods

A Black family maintains a farm in North Carolina until, after the crops are destroyed two years running, Junior's father moves his wife and son into town. Although the library there excludes Black residents, Junior discovers a log cabin in a forest clearing, where he can borrow three books per visit. This library's collection includes many books by Black writers. Junior chooses three books, one for each of his parents and one for himself. Puzzled when his father sits with his book every evening, but doesn't open it, Junior asks his mother, who confides that his father cannot read. In writing the story, Ramsey was inspired by his childhood memories of watching his older brother Junior smiling, grimacing, and laughing while reading books, as well as the author's own experiences with the nearby "library in the woods." In an appended note, Ramsey explains that the story reflects its setting in the Jim Crow South, where literacy was often used to exclude Black residents from voting. The first-person narrative unfolds with simplicity, clarity, and emotional resonance. Christie's illustrations, painted with acrylics, capture the tone of events as well as the look of the mid-twentieth-century setting. The use of juxtaposed colors is particularly effective in expressing the moods of the story.

After weather events destroy their crops two years running, young Junior's Black family relocates to town. In Jim Crow--era Roxboro, N.C., Junior's schoolmates tell him that "we have our own library"--a log cabin hidden in the woods, where "the books seemed to go on forever," Ramsey writes. Junior carefully chooses a title each for himself, his mother, and his father--and in doing so learns that his father does not know how to read. Christie's rich acrylic illustrations employ smudgy textures across town and country landscapes in this personal-feeling work about adult illiteracy that ends with a moving reflection on intergenerational connection and different kinds of knowledge. An author's note concludes. Ages 7--11. (Aug.)

After crop failures force a family to relocate to town, a country boy is delighted to discover a whole library there for him and other members of the Black community. The move to Roxboro, North Carolina--inspired by the author's own experiences growing up in the 1950s--brings changes welcome and otherwise to young Junior's life, but a wonderful one comes from a schoolmate's revelation: "We have our own library." A small building in a nearby clearing contains a dazzling world of books, and Junior runs home with a book about George Washington Carver for his father, a book of poetry by Phillis Wheatley for his mother, and "one on the three musketeers" for himself. Choosing a muted palette, Christie reflects the quiet dignity of Ramsey's sparely worded narrative in views of slender, dark-skinned figures, usually seen from a distance, moving between small, widely spaced houses in verdant settings. He closes with a tender scene of Junior sitting on the porch reading to his father, who never learned how. (Momma explains that he worked the farm as a child so that his younger siblings could go to school.) The author adds a news clipping to his afterword with a photo of the log cabin library that led him to write this semi-autobiographical tale; reflecting on his own arrival in Roxboro in 1959, he writes of that library's importance at "a time when the hopes and dreams of little Black children were easily dashed." A tribute to a community treasure, understated but rich in feeling.(Picture book. 6-9) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.