Art & Story: The Role of Illustration in Multicultural Literature for Youth (review)

Art & Story: The Role of Illustration in Multicultural Literature for Youth offers readers the best children's book illustration speeches and conference presentations from the annual Kent State University Virginia Hamilton Conferences between 1985 (the year of the first conference) and 1996. Following their 1992 volume, Many Faces, Many Voices, Multicultural Literary Experiences for Youth: The Virginia Hamilton Conference, this second volume from the Hamilton Conferences addresses editors Anthony L. Manna and Carolyn S. Brodie's concern that the conference is not giving ample attention to the visual elements of multicultural children's literature. The material presented here suggests that the conference is now contributing much to the national and international dialogues on children's picture book illustration.

The volume begins with an interview that the editors conducted with Virginia Hamilton about the role of illustration in picture books. Since Hamilton writes but does not illustrate her own picture books, her comments shed light on the relationship (or sometimes the lack thereof) between the editor, the author, and the illustrator; her comments emphasize that Hamilton's long-standing success as a writer has given her a greater measure of control over the visual elements of her books than she would have if she were less successful.

Manna and Brodie include contributions by the following authors, illustrators, editors, and publishers in this volume: Arnold Adoff, Pat Cummings, Floyd Cooper, Brian Pinkney, Vera B. Williams, Shonto Begay, Lulu Delacre, Patricia Polacco, James Ransome, Dianne Hess, Opal J. Moore, Sue McCleaf Nespeca, and Maureen White. Reading about children's literature from the perspective of the authors, artists, conference organizers, and the "gatekeepers" (who determine what does and does not get published) may help readers to understand the complex dynamics of this genre as an industry, a literary field of study, an educational arena, and an important source of culturally rich entertainment for countless children. Four appendices provide invaluable information on the history of the Virginia Hamilton Conference as well as helpful lists of multicultural children's and young adult literature and media.

While I can envision a number of good uses for Art & Story, I was disappointed with the lack of structure in most of the speeches. The majority of the contributors offer interesting vignettes from their life and work and talk about the creation and/or publication of specific texts; many share how established authors have inspired and helped them. Although themes related to creativity as a minority artist recur throughout the chapters, few of the individual speeches have an underlying argument, and there seems to be little, as a volume, that ties the chapters together. Perhaps this is in part a function of the editors' having compiled into a single volume unedited speeches that span eleven years which have no unifying question or theme. Despite this weakness, the contributions of Patricia Polacco, Arnold Adoff, and Opal J. Moore stayed with me long after I had finished reading the volume.

Every writer has a story to tell, but in her essay "Heroes," Polacco stands out as a storyteller extraordinaire. Apparently holding a scarf in her hand during the speech, Polacco introduces the audience to her babushka, a word which also means "grandmother" in Russian. Polacco tells the story of her mother's attachment to her native land through the babushka and how her mother's mother made a quilt from the fabrics of their native Russia so that her daughter could remember all of the people to whom those clothes once belonged. By using good storytelling, Polacco argues convincingly for the essential role of excellent storytelling in family preservation and the importance of authentic cultural voices in multicultural children's literature. While reading Polacco's chapter, one can easily forget that this is an essay about her stories rather than a story itself.

Adoff's two-page chapter, "To Lisa Desimini," is by far the most creative and unusual contribution in the volume. Typed (ostensibly on a typewriter) in bold...