Book Review: Her Stories: African American Folktales, Fairy Tales, and True Tales
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What Parents Should Know
Gorgeous illustrations, melodic language, and the recurring
theme of the worth of women make this a powerful and poignant
read for anyone, but particularly for young African-American
women.
Common Sense Media Review
The oral history of African-American women has been passed
on for centuries through spoken word, spirituals and lullabies,
autobiographical musings, and nighttime tales. Hamilton has
collected the best of these, presenting them in a beautiful
book illustrated by intensely colorful paintings.
The comments that accompany the stories, explaining their history, colloquial language, and imagery, are as fascinating as the stories themselves, and contribute greatly to the sense of self a girl develops when reading these accounts. The final three stories, "Her True Tales," are oral histories of three African-American women. It is this chapter--when we meet real women speaking in their own voices--that brings the rest of the book together, giving perspective and context to the folklore and fairy tales. These heroines are real ones; their voices will be the sounds that carry on, that will echo in the hearts of young readers long after the last page is read.
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