Brown Angels: An Album of Pictures and Verse by Walter Dean Myers

Brown Angels: An Album of Pictures and Verse Reviews

• 
  Sincerae

  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:
  
  https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/love-...
• 
  Cheryl

  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.
• 
  Faloni ©

  🔥💥📷💥🔥Students in our classroom are asked to wear attire that is appropriate for this special collectible edition; instructors are requesting students support each other through these reading sessions. 💕🤳Students practice poses for promotions using images inside of this classic storybook. 👊🏾👊🏾
  https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...
• 
  Alicia (PrettyBrownEyeReader)

  This children’s book reminds me of looking through a family photo album. The book contains sepia and black and white photos of brown children from the early 20th centuries. They are photos Walter Dean Myers collected during his lifetime.
  
  The photos inspired he poems Myers pens for the book. This is an excellent book to start conversations about family history, Black history and poetry.
  
  I will return to this book again!
  
• 
  Paul

  What a lovely book, mostly in sepias, grays and blacks, with the occasional, gorgeous and welcome sip of color. The spacious layout on lots of open space on ivory paper is good ground for Myer's tender poems. A sample, "Summer," that is so much better read out loud...
  
  I like hot days, hot days
  Sweat is what you got days
  Bugs buzzin from cousin to cousin
  Juices dripping
  Running and ripping
  Cath the one you love days
  
  Birds peeping
  Old men sleeping
  Lazy days, daisies lay
  Beaming and dreaming
  Of hot days, hot days,
  Sweat is what you got days
  
  ...especially "Lazy days, daisies lay." The stars of the book are the children that populate the photographs, almost all in portraits.
• 
  Hannah

  Can't believe I've never added this to my virtual bookshelf! This remains one of my best loved collections of poetry. It's absolutely beautiful, and my memories of having the poems read to me by my parents or my sister are some of my favorites. "Love That Boy" is a classic, but it doesn't mean the other peoms in this book aren't marvelous as well.
• 
  Susie

  When I first read this lovely book of poetry, I didn't know about the photographer Richard Samuel Roberts from Columbia, South Carolina. Myers used many of his pictures including my favorite, the little boy with the chicken - his pet?? - I wonder.
  Sharon Creech hadn't written Love That Dog either, with Myers' poem, "Love That Boy," as one of her central lures for Jack and poetry.
  Confluence of the stars. . . ahhhhhh. . .
• 
  Brian

  Read with my son after reading "Love That Dog" by Sharon Creech in which she focuses on Walter Dean Myers and his poem "Love That Boy." The full poem is recorded in this album of pictures and verse. I have loved other novels by Myers but this is my first introduction to his poetry.
• 
  K.C. Gardner

  This picture book of poetry has pictures of lovely children from long ago. Just as the children were different from one another, the poems here vary, with some sounding much like jump-rope jingles, and others very serious statements about the potential of the children in their time. Recommended.
• 
  Morgan

  Beautiful pictures and cute, children-appropriate poems to accompany them.
• 
  Maughn Gregory

  I was deeply moved by the words and images. Walter Dean Myers is a genius.
• 
  Rolf

  What a lovely collection of poems and pictures celebrating the beauty of blackness for young listeners, and with rhymes that my six-year-old loved and was repeating throughout bedtime.
• 
  Sarah

  My favorite poem from this book is "Love That Boy" which Sharon Creech included as a key poem in her book, "Love That Dog." I can imagine Mr. Walter Dean Myers reading this poem to a bunch of kids at an elementary school or a library, exuding all of the warmth and over-flowing love he has for his own son. His voice comes out of this poem, so even though I have never seen or heard him, I can still strongly imagine this.
  
  I can imagine children pouring over the wonderful portraits of the anonymous African American children and their families in these black and white photographs from around the turn of the last century. The majority of these, the author found and collected from antique shops. Perhaps elementary age students (2nd grade and up) could make their own poems about the children in the photographs or bring in personal photos and write poems about their own families. These could then be made into a class book or produced as a gift for the winter holidays, Mother's Day, or an early Father's day present. I would Walter Dean Myers’s book, Angel to Angel: A Mother’s Gift of Love, as a companion book. Like Brown Angels book, Angel to Angel is another book featuring Mr. Myers’s poetry about families accompanied by antique photographs of African American children and their families from his collection.
  
• 
  Esther

  Published in 1996 by HarperTrophy
  Interest Level: 4th-6th Grade
  
  Myers uses his personal collection of photos from the turn of the 20th century to display various poems about subjects that he sees reflected in the images he has selected. Profound pictures are used that make the reader curious to Myers' intention as well as who the subjects of the photo is. Additionally, the short poems allow for the photographs to carry a deeper meaning. Each page is like a scrapbook of a family that moves through everyday life as an African-American. Written from an insider's perspective and definitely full of cultural nuances; this book is recommended as an example of poetry and image as well as the scrapbook style of presentation.
• 
  Sarah

  Gorgeous photographs flanked by poems about the African American experience at the turn of the century. (Guess we now need to clarify which turn, although, in my mind this clearly means the change from the nineteenth to the twentieth century.) Loved the pictures but poetry has never really been my thing. However, this would make for a lovely gift, an important addition to a school library, or an ideal coffee table browser.
• 
  Cara Byrne

  "Why do I love children? I think it is because the child in each of us is our most precious part. Children remind us of a time of innocence, a time of giving, and an unfettered love of life."
  
  This collection of brief poems and beautiful photographs from the early twentieth century joins a long history of photography in African American-authored picture books for children (and adults). My favorite poems are "Love That Boy" and "Pride."
• 
  Taneka

  Walter Dean Myers uses old photographs of African American children from the 1920's to provide visuals to the poetry that is presented. Myers finds photo's in antique shops and, although nameless, the children bring a great deal of joy to the verses and are a treat for the reader.
• 
  Shelia

  I loved this book and got it for my mom for Mother's day one year...and went back and got myself one
• 
  Cristina1961

  The pictures taken of children in the early days of photography have to be seen to appreciate.
• 
  ke-sha

  This book is short and sweet. I loved the poems in this book & the Pictures that went along with it. Whenever I re-read this book it just takes me back to my childhood :)
• 
  Jen

  Interesting old photographs and lovely poems.
• 
  Colleen

  Lovely old photographs, but the poems are not as strong.
• 
  Devan Green

  Beautiful book! Awesome concept and execution. Just a gem of a book. I want it in hardcover for my collection!