Ebony Jr! The Rise, Fall, and Return of a Black Children’s Magazine (review)

Laretta Henderson’s Ebony Jr! The Rise, Fall and Return of a Black Children’s Magazine is a welcome contribution to the literature exploring the history of African American children’s literature. The book is divided into three broad parts addressing “Ebony Jr!’s Place in the World of Children’s Periodicals,” as well as “contexts and analysis” of the magazine within the realm of “Politics and Education” and as relating to “Constructing Black Children and Their Literature.” Henderson is brutally honest in her introduction, noting that within the community in which she grew up, the adult magazine Ebony was considered “a little out of touch with the political positions of most Blacks” (ix). This, she suggests, is part of the reason she wasn’t especially interested in reading the counterpart designed for children. As a scholar, she is less dismissive—the Jackson Five on the magazine’s cover is no longer the main reason for her to give it her attention! While giving due acknowledgement to other scholars of African American children’s literature (including Beryle Banfield, Rudine Sims Bishop, Violet Harris, Donnarae MacCann, Katherine Capshaw Smith, and myself), she points out that they have not given Ebony Jr! the attention it deserves. Her project is designed to fill that space. She employs the “lens of Black Studies” (x) to engage in a quite thorough analysis of the magazine, an undertaking she describes as being “Black in orientation, interdisciplinary in scope, and reformist by nature” (xiii).

Indeed, the volume is profoundly interdisciplinary, examining everything from publisher John H. Johnson’s biography to black Christian and Nation of Islam constructions of childhood; ranging from discussions of letters sent in by young readers to hairstyles in the stories and art; from sexism in Ebony Jr! to how foodways are manifested in the magazine. Henderson has managed to write a book that simultaneously presents a meticulously close reading of Ebony Jr! and a wide-reaching snapshot of black America during the magazine’s life span. For the purposes of ChLAQ readers, Henderson makes a case for Ebony Jr! as part of an American/African American literary tradition (broadly construed to encompass magazines and books). Thus, she discusses Ebony Jr! in relationship to mainstream periodicals for children such as Highlights for Children and Cricket: The Literary Magazine for Children, as well as contemporary black children’s literature.

One of the most interesting discussions in the book is related to the various editors who shaped and reshaped the magazine over the years and how their leadership influenced the look and shape of the magazine in successive periods and led to its thriving or eventual demise. The discussion is thorough, addressing issues such as their decisions about approach (Afrocentrism for instance), language (extent to which black English vernacular is used), geographical orientation (grounded mainly in northern experience), economic class distinctions within black communities, and more. Just as interesting, this section of the book helps further the reader’s understanding of the kinds of concerns a magazine editor has to take into account and what kinds of decisions she must make. In addition to literary questions, Henderson addresses how the magazine speaks to issues of class, political orientation, conceptions of beauty, and more. But her overarching interest in the magazine is its “pervasive educational component”—construed broadly (3).

An especially interesting strain of exploration in the book has to do with what is left out of the magazine—that is what topics editors decided not to educate young readers about. Perhaps most surprising is the absence of material dealing with slavery. Henderson’s suspicion is that “Teaching the history of slavery might foster resentment in the racialized reader” as far as Johnson and his editors were concerned (80). Another curious absence that existed not only in Ebony Jr! but in children’s literature in general, Henderson argues, are stories about children’s involvement in the Civil Rights Movement (she cites the...