Once Upon a Time in a Different World: Issues and Ideas in African American Children’s Literature

by Neal A. Lester

Once Upon a Time in a Different World, a unique addition to the celebrated Children's Literature and Culture series, seeks to move discussions and treatments of ideas in African America Children's literature from the margins to the forefront of literary discourse. Looking at a variety of topics, including the moralities of heterosexism, the veneration of literacy, and the "politics of hair," Neal A. Lester provides a scholarly and accessible compilation of essays that will serve as an invaluable resource for parents, students, and educators.

The much-needed reexamination of African American children's texts follows an engaging call-and-response format, allowing for a lively and illuminating discussion between its primary author and a diverse group of contributors; including educators, scholars, students, parents, and critics. In addition to these distinct dialogues, the book features an enlightening generational conversation between Lester and his teenage daughter as they review the same novels. With critical assessments of Toni and Slade Morrison's The Big Box and The Book of Mean People, bell hooks' Happy to Be Nappy, and Anne Schraff's Until We Meet Again, among many other works, these provocative and fresh essays yield a wealth of perspectives on the intersections of identity formations in childhood and adulthood.

304 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 2007

Reviews

[Cara Byrne · Rating 4 out of 5]

In building this work from many previous articles and book reviews he has published over a 20-year+ period, Neal Lester provides readers with a critical book filled with thoughtful material about African American children's literature. As the father of daughters, he depicts a sensitivity to how black children are imagined in children's literature. I am most appreciative of his chapters on representations of hair in African American children's literature, as this is a key research interest of mine.

[Roopsi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Neal's book on black children's lit is phenomenal. It's organized in a call-and-response format, and each chapter ends with a set of discussion questions that one might use with students. Neal covers a wide range of topics, from heterosexism to hair, intermingling literary analysis with personal memoir. An extremely fresh book, this is a must read for scholars and teachers.