Resources For Study of Black Children's Literature at the University of Minnesota
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Resources for the study of Black Children's Literature at the University of Minnesota are located in two special collections, namely the Children's Literature Research Collections (CLRC, including the Kerlan, Hess, Series Books, and Periodicals) and Special Collections and Rare Books.
Black authors, illustrators, and a photographer have donated their working materials to the Kerlan Collection and several hundred first editions by blacks are housed in the collection. Lorenz B. Graham's nine manuscripts for books, such as the then contemporary realistic fiction, North Town (1965), a biography about an abolitionist who lived from 1800 to 1859, John Brown, A Cry for Freedom (1980) and I, Momolu (1966) about children in Liberia, reveal how he worked. For North Town, for example, he wrote by hand (holograph), continued with three typed drafts and even changed the galley proof. In addition, he inscribed most of his twelve books in the collection with pertinent comments for the researcher.
Eloise Greenfield's First Pink Light (1976) went through at least four drafts. Ashley Bryan's books can be studied as a body, or in depth, using the working draft of the manuscript and a sequence of ten developmental stages for the "I Got Shoes" linoleum block image in Walk Together Children; Black American Spirituals (1974). Photographer Gordon Parks, Jr. sent a set of prints for Jane Wagner's J.T. (1969) and Elton Fax gave pencil illustrations for Verna Aardema's Tales from the Story Hat (1960).
Examples abound in the Kerlan Collection of books by black authors including Lucille Clifton, Virginia Hamilton, June Jordan, Sharon Bell Mathis, and Walter Dean Myers, and by illustrators including Donald Crews, Leo Dillon, Jerry Pinkney, and John Steptoe. In addition, there are books, manuscripts, and illustrations about black characters by non-blacks. Among the titles represented by manuscripts are William Armstrong's Sounder (1969), which won the Newbery Award, Bette Greene's Philip Hall Likes Me. I Reckon Maybe (1974), Frank Bonham's Durango Street (1965), and Robert Lipsyte's The Contender (1967). Theodore Taylor's seventeen manuscripts include that with a Caribbean setting, The Cay (1969). Evaline Ness donated art for two books by Lucille Clifton about the boy Everett Anderson. [End Page 87]
Series books and periodicals also reflect the changing image of black Americans in the mainstream culture. The Stratemeyer Syndicate series such as the Bobbsey Twins and Nancy Drew often portray black sterotypic minor characters, and Lucy Fitch Perkins and Inez Hogan also feature them. American Boy, St Nicholas Magazine, and Youth's Companion are among several hundred periodicals for children in the collection. Dime novels, such as publications by Beadle and Adams, which is indexed, also await the researcher. Approximately four thousand Street & Smith issues are now microfilmed, cataloged on the RLIN data base, and available on Inter Library Loan.
Special Collections and Rare Books acquired a 3,000 volume collection assembled by Richard Lee Hoffman, a professor and playwright who teaches English and speech at New York City Technical College in Brooklyn. Now termed "The Archie Givens Sr. Collection" the collection contains, in addition to the books, several hundred "pamphlets, manuscripts, letters, and ephemera of Afro-American literature produced during a span of over 200 years, from the late eighteenth century to the present." Familiar names such as Phillis Wheatley, Ann Petry, Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes will attract researchers.
CLRC is an umbrella for several children's literature collections which enhance the teaching, research, and service mission of the University of Minnesota. The Kerlan Collection, founded in 1949, houses 40,000 children's books, and manuscripts and/or illustrations for 5,000 titles, while the Hess Collection consists of 10,000 Series Books and some 60,000 dime novels, pulps, and story papers. Parking is available across the mall from Walter Library in the Church Street Garage. Air passengers take the Airport Limousine at the taxi stand to the Radisson University Hotel and walk two blocks west to the campus mall. For more information, write the Curator, CLRC, University of Minnesota, 109 Walter Library, 117 Pleasant Ave. S.E., Minneapolis, MN 55455...
