Go Forth and Tell
The Life of Augusta Baker, Librarian and Master Storyteller
written by Breanna J. McDaniel
illustrated by April Harrison
Dial Books for Young Readers, 2024. 40 pages.
Review written February 7, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review
2025 Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor Book
A picture book biography of a ground-breaking children’s librarian who inspired many great Black authors? Yes, please!
I hadn’t heard of Augusta Baker before reading this book, but her story makes me proud to be a librarian.
The book begins with her as a child listening to her grandmother’s stories and goes on to using those tales in college to learn to be a storyteller, and getting a job as a children’s librarian at the 135th Street Branch of the New York Public Library in Harlem, where she worked with children like future authors James Baldwin and Audre Lorde. She found stories to give Black children “heroes that rose up and looked, talked, and shined bright, just like them.”
She went on to become the first Black person to be the coordinator of children’s services in all New York Public Library branches. And she continued to tell stories and became the master Storyteller-in-Residence at the University of South Carolina, where they started a storytelling festival in her honor.
And all this wonderful story is told with vivid, bright and joyful illustrations of this dynamic woman inspiring others.
breannajmcdaniel.com
april-harrison.com
penguin.com/kids
Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Nonfiction/go_forth_and_tell.html
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Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.
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