Her Stories: African American Folktales, Fairy Tales, and True Tales (by Virginia Hamilton)

The oral history of African-American women has been passed on for centuries through spoken word, spirituals and lullabies, autobiographical musings, and nighttime tales. Virginia Hamilton has collected the best of these, presenting them in a beautiful book illustrated by intensely colorful paintings. The comments that accompany the stories, explaining their history, colloquial language, and imagery, are as fascinating as the stories themselves, and contribute greatly to the sense of self a girl develops when reading these accounts.

The final three stories are oral histories of three African-American women. It is this chapter -- when we meet real women speaking in their own voices -- that brings the rest of the book together, giving perspective and context to the folklore and fairy tales.