Tags
children's books, Langston Hughes, literacy, preschool literacy activities, reading, Sean Qualls
There are many moments I love about parenthood.
Recently, I read Lullaby (For a Black Mother) with both my daughters, aged five and two.
My eldest chose it on our trip to the library.
I’m big on my kids choosing their own books. Sure, sometimes I steer and suggest based on their interests and levels (as an example, we also have a copy of Jack and the Beanstalk at home currently due to having talked about that story at dinner one night), but usually I try to let them pick their own.
On this trip, my eldest was quite definitive about this one. We arrived; she pulled it quickly off the shelf, handed it to me declaring “this one!” and then wandered off to play showing it no more interest until we left.
At which point she made sure we had it.
The book is an illustration of Langston Hughes‘ beautiful poem. Here it is in full:
My little dark baby,
My little earth-thing,
My little love-one,
What shall I sing
For your lullaby?Stars,
Stars,
A necklace of stars
Winding the night.My little black baby,
My dark body’s baby,
What shall I sing
For your lullaby?Moon,
Moon,
Great diamond moon,
Kissing the night.Oh, little dark baby,
Night black baby,Stars, stars,
Moon,
Night stars,
Moon,For your sleep-song lullaby!
Hughes, who had no children, wrote this as a young man. It was included in a 1932 collection entitled “The Dream Keeper and Other Poems” and included poems about the moon, rain, rivers and fairies. According to the back of this book, he also wrote about maple-sugar children in sugar houses and dreams with “poems being his way to wrap dreams up in a soft blanket and keep them safe.”
The back of this book posits he may have written Lullaby thinking of himself as a child and his mother, who in the absence of his father, worked numerous jobs and was often gone leaving him with his grandmother. However, whenever she did come home, they would go to the library, which Langston loved. Of that period of his life he has said:
I was unhappy for a long time, and very lonesome, living with my grandmother. Then it was that books began to happen to me, and I began to believe in nothing but books and the wonderful world in books — where if people suffered, they suffered in beautiful language, not in monosyllables, as we did in Kansas.
Returning to the book we read, the illustrations – by Sean Qualls – are as beautiful as the poem giving the entire book a calming, nighttime, ethereal, dreamy and all together peaceful feel.
Stars, stars, a necklace of stars – image links to source
But I never would have picked it up for my kids.
On quick inspection, I thought it was a beautiful picture book, but obviously not targeted at my family because, well, I’m not a black mother and I don’t have black babies. So reading a lullaby specific to a culture not my own didn’t seem to fit.
My 5-year-old saw none of that.
I asked why she chose the book and her answer was that it looked like the mom on the cover was going to kiss the baby and she liked that.
We read through it a couple of times the first night we chose it for bedtime reading. By the end of the first read my two-year-old was repeating bits. By the second read she was anticipating certain parts and saying it along with me.
Necklace of stars, great diamond moon…. mother’s love and sweet dreams. That’s all they saw and heard.
It’s funny. Having worked and volunteered as a literacy tutor I remember scouring donation bins to find books showing different ethnicities because I think it’s important for kids to see their culture and heritage represented on the page.
My daughter’s class photo is a simple – and wonderful – reminder of how multicultural we are here in Ottawa.
This book was a good reminder to me that it’s equally important for kids to see a variety of cultures accurately and equally represented in what they read and watch.
I hope as my girls get older and begin to realize the many things that impact and influence how people can view others, that they remember simple moments and messages like the one they got from this book.
Because at this moment they are truly and beautifully blind to colour. All they see is a mother hugging her child; lovingly putting him to bed; with clouds, stars, moon and sweet dreams.
These moments are one of the many things I love about parenthood – being able to see the world anew through my kids eyes – so simply and clearly.
Baby Gates Down 
What a lovely book and poem. I too let me children pick at the library, Sometimes it has made for wonderful finds like this and some interesting ones. My son is obsessed with trains and one time he picked a book about a midnight train. It was a picture book, but as always I skim through it before taking a book home. I opened it and it was a little boy’s journey on a train and then a scary interaction with the KKK. It was a powerful and important book, but he was 4 at the time. I thought it would scare him if we read about all of the story. He was not pleased when I said that the book would be on a wait list until he was 8. We waited and read it then and discussed. Books are powerful!
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Thanks so much for the comment. I agree with your approach as to guiding as appropriate and can understand how difficult the decision on that book must have been – glad to hear you went back to it at the right time.
Books are, indeed, powerful. I hope, as my girls get older, we can have more in depth conversations about what we read.
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I can just imagine her pulling the book off the shelf and exclaiming, “this one!” 🙂 I love when people of any age are excited about reading!
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What a beautiful book! I love how kids think and only wish that the rest of the world could absorb the innocence that they have! My son happens to be the only white kid in his day care. It’s a wonderful in home day care ran by a black woman who happens to be second mom to him! I love that he loves her almost as much as me and he doesn’t see the color of her skin nor that of his friends. 🙂
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What a wonderful opportunity for your son from a young age. I also love that my daughter has friends from many different backgrounds and cultures in her class. I think that is a wonderful way to learn about the world beyond her family – to figure out the similarities and differences and celebrate both.
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Oooo, I so appreciate this post.
You are doing a lovely job of raising your girls. Your response in allowing her to choose the book (and not talking her out of it) was the moment where you either got behind her or in her way.
I appreciate you sharing so much about Langston Hughes and his childhood – I learned a few more things about him from his post and this book. The only concern I have to express is the idea of being “color blind”. It is never my desire for people to look past the color of my skin, but see the beauty of it and still treat me as if it doesn’t matter. Color blind is dangerous – I don’t think anyone is blind to color, but can be blind to the stereotypes and negativity of it – as most children are until taught otherwise.
Thanks for sharing!
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Okay, I like how you say it better – I did not mean that my young kids look past the colour of anyone’s skin and do not notice that some people are black and some people are white and some people are other shades and ethnicities in between – but rather, as you say, they see it and are blind to any stereotypes the rest of the world places on in.
Thank you so much for commenting.
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Love the post. The poem is so sweet. Thank you for sharing.
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I should go to the library t see if this book is there! I also like having my kids seeing that there are other kinds of people and families besides ours. I also like showing them picture books. I think my younger daughter will love the line, “Necklace of stars, great diamond moon…. mother’s love and sweet dreams.” She loves stars, and will want to stay on this page a while to look and count them.
Thanks for sharing this amazing book with us, Louise! 🙂
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Our copy is now at Centrepointe – we were there yesterday :). Maybe I should do a “Library Crawl” as an OMC post – I’ve certainly seen enough of them in the recent past…
There were a number of beautiful lines in this book – and the pictures were gorgeous. I admit I hadn’t given much critical thought to the illustrators of children’s books until looking into this one – I mean, I know they are important – but these pictures really helped make the book exceptional and memorable.
Thanks as always for the support!
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I think it would be a great feature for you to do for OMC! Swing the idea past L.P.!
Yes, the pictures, from what you shared were gorgeous and did make this book stand out!
I will always give support to a great post by a great blogger. This post was a gem!
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I love that poem, and what a great find! Kids are so uncomplicated. My daughter has a whole stack of Disney Princess pictures for coloring, and she often makes their skin all the shades of the rainbow and many different browns. I tell her they are beautiful, and I think they are. 🙂 The world is changing for the better.
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It really was a delightful find. And that’s a great way to say it: kids are uncomplicated in their thoughts and it leads to some great moments and realizations as a parent.
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It helps us simplify again. Things can get all twisted up, but they don’t have to stay that way. Kids help me find my way back to simple joy.
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