The Blacker the Berry (review)

Well-known poet Thomas offers a dozen free-verse poems in the voices of African American children, each describing and exulting in their own individual and beautiful skin color. The author takes the berry metaphor of the title and runs it through the poems, with one boy referring to himself as "raspberry-black ("I am African-Native-American"), a girl realizing her arms are "as bronze and golden" as the huckleberry bush, and another "as light as snowberries in fall," while other kids are "biscuit brown" and "midnight and berries" dark. The poems are bolsteringly inclusive, gaining particular energy when they touch on family exchanges or stories (Grandma's anecdote makes "Coffee Will Make You Black" a standout entry). Often, though, the poems are merely prettily descriptive and their eloquence flattened by the hard-pushed positivity; the berry metaphor also becomes somewhat strained with repetition. The berries can become a tad intrusive in the art as well, but Cooper's misty pastels otherwise offer some evocative portraiture of bright-eyed youngsters, with hearty realism in gap-toothed smiles and individual faces that helps balance out the idealism of the settings. This is a topic not often overtly treated in literature for young people, and this collection could make a partner to other books about African-American acceptance such as Sandra Pinkney's Shades of Black (BCCB 1/01) or hooks' Happy to Be Nappy (BCCB 1/00).