Tar Beach

CORETTA SCOTT KING AWARD WINNER • CALDECOTT HONOR BOOK • A NEW YORK TIMES BEST ILLUSTRATED BOOK Acclaimed artist Faith Ringgold seamless weaves fiction, autobiography, and African American history into a magical story that resonates with the universal wish for freedom, and will be cherished for generations. Cassie Louise Lightfoot has a dream: to be free to go wherever she wants for the rest of her life. One night, up on “tar beach,” the rooftop of her family’s Harlem apartment building, her dreams come true. The stars lift her up, and she flies over the city, claiming the buildings and the city as her own. As Cassie learns, anyone can fly. “All you need is somewhere to go you can’t get to any other way. The next thing you know, you’re flying among the stars.”

Found family photographs from New York's Little Italy portray a vanished way of life In Tar Beach, photographer and Little Italy resident Susan Meiselas (born 1948) brings together found pictures that were made, kept and gathered by various families who handed them down from 1940 to the early 1970s. Reflections from the community offer perspectives of multiple generations, as local author Angel Marinaccio says: "If you had an accomplishment--communion, confirmation, wedding, graduation or birthday, you'd dress up in your best outfit and go to the rooftop to take pictures and celebrate with your family." The introduction to Tar Beachis written by renowned filmmaker Martin Scorsese, who grew up on the streets portrayed in this collection. He writes: "The roof was our escape hatch and it was our sanctuary. The endless crowds, the filth and the grime, the constant noise, the chaos, the claustrophobia, the non-stop motion of everything ... you would walk up that flight of stairs, open the door, and you were above it all. You could breathe. You could dream. You could be." Meiselas, along with two of her neighbors, Angel Marinaccio and Virginia Bynum, collected and curated these vernacular photographs and memories to convey the feeling of this special place and time in the daily lives of Italian immigrants as they made their way to becoming part of American culture.

Count all the good things from one to ten that Cassie and her family take to the rooftop for their scrumptious picnic on Tar Beach. Lemonade, chickens, watermelons, and chocolate chip cookies are just some of the things they're going to enjoy. Toddlers will love learning to count with this delicious introduction to numbers.

Acclaimed artist and Caldecott-winning picture book creator Faith Ringgold shares an inspiring look at America's lineage in this stunning ode to our country--past, present, and future. America is a land of diversity. Whether driven by dreams and hope, or escaping poverty or persecution, our ancestors--and the faces of America today--represent people from every reach of the globe. And each person brought with them a unique gift--of art and music; of determination and grit; of ideas and strength--that forever shaped the country we all call home. Vividly evoked in Faith Ringgold's sumptuous colors and patterns, WE CAME TO AMERICA is an ode to every American who came before us, and a tribute to the children who will carry its message into our future.

It's a special day for Cassie. Her daddy's taking her out for a surprise treat. As she gets dressed, she chooses many colorful items: her yellow-and-red polka-dot dress, purple shoes, a green pocketbook. What's the surprise? He's taking her to the ice cream parlor, with its blueand-orange sign. Cassie orders her favorite--a pink strawberry sundae!

When Cassie Louise Lightfoot encounters Harriet Tubman and a mysterious train in the sky, what follows is a compelling journey in which the author masterfully integrates fantasy and historical fact (School Library Journal, starred review). Full color.

A family, separated by duty and distance, waits for a loved one to return home in this lyrical picture book celebrating the bonds of a Cherokee family and the bravery of history-making women pilots. At the mountain's base sits a cabin under an old hickory tree. And in that cabin lives a family -- loving, weaving, cooking, and singing. The strength in their song sustains them through trials on the ground and in the sky, as they wait for their loved one, a pilot, to return from war. With an author's note that pays homage to the true history of Native American U.S. service members like WWII pilot Ola Mildred "Millie" Rexroat, this is a story that reveals the roots that ground us, the dreams that help us soar, and the people and traditions that hold us up.

This is an important new book published to coincide with a major exhibition of Faith Tinggold's new work and Studio collection. While the book explores Faith's work in her studio and her personal artistic journey, it is also an encounter between one artist and another, between Faith and her collaborator Curlee Holton. The mix provides unique insights into the struggles and triumphs of a woman who is at once an activist and an artist and whose achievements are admired throughout the world.

SCAD University Press announces the release of Kenturah Davis: Everything that Cannot be Known, the artist's first monograph on the occasion of her first solo museum exhibition at the SCAD Museum of Art, Feb. 6-Dec. 13, 2020. Featuring an insightful preface by Diane Von Furstenberg and an oeuvre-defining essay by curator Humberto Moro, the catalog also includes a conversation between Davis and BOMB Magazine's Stephanie E. Goodalle and poems by Jayy Dodd.Reworking photographs from fact to fiction, Davis uses mark-making processes, including her own handwriting and rubber letter stamps, to explore the impossibilities of representing Black bodies. Often blurred by other layers of material treatment, her figures seem to display auras or traces of movement in areas of raised or recessed relief. Witnessing the works' graphic complexity as a metaphor, the viewer ultimately wonders: can the multitudes of our identities ever be known?

For use in schools and libraries only. A biography of the African American woman and civil rights worker whose refusal to give up her seat on a bus led to a boycott that lasted more than a year in Montgomery, Alabama.