Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Boy

Parents need to know that Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Boy, by Tony Medina (I Am Alfonso Jones) pairs Medina's poems with illustrations by 13 artists, including recent Caldecott and Coretta Scott King Award recipients. Poems and illustrations depict black boys and young men -- and their families and community mentors -- going about their lives. They flirt, run for the bus, worry about money, sit on the stoop, go to church, build robots in the classroom lab, and more. The words and images send the messages that black boys are human, multifaceted, and beautiful. In addition to presenting positive images of black boys and black families, this text teaches the tanka form in poetry and makes reference to several other literary works: Wallace Stevens' poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" from 1954; Raymond Patterson's collection and its title poem "Twenty-Six Ways of Looking at a Black Man" from 1969; and Henry Louis Gates' collection of essays and interviews, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man from 1997.