Professional Article Review

The Black Experience in Children's Fiction: Controversies Surrounding Award
Winning Books
Joel Taxel
Curriculum Inquiry, Vol. 16, No. 3. (Autumn, 1986), pp. 245-281.

The article The Black Experience in Children’s Fiction: Controversies Surrounding Award Winning Books by Joel Taxel, focuses on evaluating “the black experience” more thoroughly to illustrate it isn’t just about getting blacks into more literature, it is about how they are correctly represented as well. Joel uses and compares three different award winning books to show how differently and sufficiently blacks are portrayed in each of these texts. Two historical young adult novels, Sebestyen’s Words By Heart and Fox’s The Slave Dancer, are criticized for presenting a “distorted and inaccurate view of black culture and history” (Taxel). The different controversial issues that these texts face are compared and examined in relation to a third novel, displayed in my text collection, by Mildred Taylor Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. As Taxel states, this is “a book lauded for both its literary qualities and its perspective on black history.

The article continued to work through statistics of how the black population is poorly presented and portrayed through much of the multicultural literature throughout history. This article is an extensive 39 page description of the different movements for minorities (blacks, women, etc.) throughout history and how these movements not only affected society, but literature as well. For example, “the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s did succeed in raising the sensitivity and consciousness of authors, editors, and publishers to the extent that these “plantation” caricatures and stereotypes appeared with diminished frequency in the newer books being published” (Taxel, pg 247). The main focus is how these portrayals of the black experience in children’s literature is truly affecting and impacting the viewpoints and knowledge of these young readers. After displaying all the arguable points of what a good and accurate piece of black literature should look like, Taxel goes through each of these award winning novels in showing why or why not it is portraying the black culture/history in an accurate tone.

Since it is a 39 page article, I am going to strictly focus on Taxel reviewing one of my chosen pieces (Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry) and how he depicts it in being “a success both in terms of its literary values and in its historical, cultural, perspective on the events it describes” (Taxel, pg 260). In the article, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry is extensively discussed from pages 256-261 but is referenced to throughout the entire article. Taxel gives a thorough summary of the book and then goes into details the different ways the book works as a good piece of African American literature. Taxel also describes through the analysis of Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry it has been shown "that out of the depth and richness of Taylor's characterizations and the strengths and authenticity of her narrative style, a model of social action emerges that is believable and satisfying on all levels" (Taxel, pg 271). Taxel continuously raves about this piece of literature and how authentic she is by Taylor using other works and by putting her own experiences in to build this masterpiece. Taxel goes on to describe the other two texts as having different stregnths but many weaknesses that gives him reason to question in what forms they are able to recieve the different awards.
Overall, I have learned through this article that there are many different levels that go along with recieving awards and the ability to question the authenticity. It is not that these different books shouldn't be on the shelves, but it is how we are going to deal with them as "award winning" novels when they clearly show many different weaknesses. In the article it gives a criteria of characteristics and qualities that need to be shown throughout the different texts to show that the author is "culturally conscious": 1)Afro-American heritage and history; 2) pride in being Black; 3)a sense of community among Blacks; 4)the importance of warm and loving human relationships particularly within families; 5)a sense of continuity; and above all, 6) the will and strength and determination to cope and survive. With this set of different criterian that should be met, Taxel goes through and shows how Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry hits on these different points throughout the novel.

Through the analysis of this article I was able to gain a deeper understanding of truly how important it is to have accurate pieces of litearture and diverse literature throughout your classroom library. Students are the ones to pick up these books while trying to become educated about a wide-range of topics; and through this diverse literature course and this article I have gained the understanding of how crucial it is to have an accurate and authentic diverse library for my students. I have also learned that I am not always going to pick the most accurate pieces to include in my literature, because through this article it shows that different books with awards sometimes don't portray that group in the right light as well, but it is about teaching my students to research and analyze these different cultural groups and to become educated on what is correct and what is not. It is about giving them the opporutnity to explore these different groups through the different text sets while coming to understand that you can't always believe everything you read, but it is about understanding the differences within the text that is fact and fiction.

Taxel, Joel. "The Black Experience in Children's Fiction: Controversies Surrounding Award Winning Books." Curriculum Inquiry 16 (1986): 245-281. 1 Apr. 2008 .