Working Cotton | Sherley Anne Williams | A very good politically 'incorrect' book.

Working Cotton | Sherley Anne Williams | The life of a child in a migrant family.

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Working Cotton

	Working Cotton Sherley Anne Williams Voyager Books, 1997 - 32 pages average customer review:based on 6 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

This child?s view of the long day?s work in the cotton fields, simply expressed in a poet?s resonant language, is a fresh and stirring look at migrant family life. ?With its restrained poetic text and impressionist paintings, this is a picture book for older readers, too.?--Booklist

A very good politically 'incorrect' book.

Some books that I read do not catch my eye right away, but this one caught my eye for a couple of reasons. For one, this book reminded me of the stories that my grandmother used to tell me about when she would be in the fields picking cotton. Two, this book does not make picking cotton sound like a bad thing at all. When my grandmother would tell me stories about being in the cotton fields, the stories would never sound bad, or harsh. Her stories made me want to pick up this book and read it. This book is about a little girl named Shelan who goes to the fields every morning to go pick cotton with her family. Her family consists of her father, mother, her two older sisters, and her baby sister Leanne, who her mother has to carry while she picks cotton. The story is told through Shelan's eyes, from the time that they get on the bus at dawn, to the time they leave the fields at sunset. The illustrations were as vivid as the little girl telling the story. The pictures were hazy, just like a very hot day, where there are no trees. I thought that was very symbolic. I liked this book a lot, for different reasons. But I do have one or two concerns about this book. For one, the book may not be suitable to teach to just "any" child. I think that a children's book is supposed to move at a comfortable pace. Not make the child think too hard, but just enough to spark some creative ideas. Every child is not going to be able to relate to this book, like others would. To make it plain, I do not think that a Black child would have as much trouble understanding this book, as opposed to children of other ethnicities. I (a Black male) understood the dialect in this book very well and I enjoyed reading the "broken language" because that was what I was used to as a child. I did not think twice about the dialect until I had to analyze it. After I read the whole thing, I wondered if children of other backgrounds would be able to understand this book. The author was not trying to think "politically correct," but rather, correct in the eyes of the little girl. Shelan doesn't know any better than to talk the way that she does. Just like any little child does not recognize their "grammatical speaking errors." I think that whoever is going to read this book to a class of little children should be conscious of what children they are reading it to. The makeup of the class who receives this book is very important. Just like Nappy Hair, this book is very real as far as language and vivid images are concerned. This book is very good nevertheless, and hearing a great storyteller tell this story would be a treat to the senses.

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The life of a child in a migrant family.

A children's book based on a book of poems by Sherley Anne Williams that first appeared in the mid-1970s. It is about a migrant family (in this case, an African-American family) who are bused from one cotton field to another to pick cotton in which the children have to help. The book is really an indictment against child labor. It shows the hardships of this life, how important the "family" is, how tired and exhausted everyone (especially children) are at the end of the day, and how much children miss playing with other children. Reading the book with other children should lead to some fruitful discussions. It is beautifully written and illustrated. The illustrator was Carole Byard and the book was a 1993 Caldecott Honor book (i.e., a runner-up to the Medal winner) for best illustrations in a book for children.

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A look back...

This is a beautifully illustrated book. I purchased the book, because my mother picked cotton on her family's land from the age of 5 to adulthood. I wanted to read the book to my children so they would know where my mother had come from. The characters in this book don't own the land they work, but travel in by bus, so it wasn't completely relevant to my mother's experience, but it is an intimate glimpse into a moment of the past.

Working Cotton

The Caldecott Medal book that I chose to read for this assignment was called Working Cotton. It is about an African American family's daily work picking cotton from the fields. Williams incorporates a good deal of African American culture into the story. Her familiarity with the dialect allows for the story to be portrayed in a very realistic way. The story is written in the third person as a young girl details her and her family's daily routine of getting up at dawn and riding a bus to the cotton fields where she, her brothers, and her father picked cotton. All the while, the mother sat along side of the field and tended to their new infant child. What makes this book unique is that it is written in a dialect that is very much expected from a less educated population. Williams uses this dialect effectively to bring the story to life. Miriam Youngerman's 1994 article in Children's Literature Association Quarterly Touches on the importance of dialect in children's books. "The dialect is a large part of the storytelling. Any children's story with a setting of a different time and place should be frelected in the dialect and the dialogue of the story" (241). As it relates to Working Cotton it is the dialect that truly makes the story convincing. Another strong aspect of this book are Carole Byard's detailed illustrations. These drawings do a great job of depicting the strain and hardships that cotton pickers dealt with on a daily basis. Every picture clearly illustrates the feelings and emotions of the characters. The illustrations take up entirely both sides of every page while the text is written on top of them. Overall, I think that this story is a strong cultural story for children to read. I believe that it is important to for children to understand the importance of hard work and willingness to help. Too many children are growing up expecting to always be taken care of. My generation is very guilty of this. Books like Working Cotton, though too remedial for adults, can go a long way to establishing an appreciation for hard work and good literature.

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Fairly accurate portrayal of life in the fields

I read this book as part of an assignment. It is a Caldecott Honor Book and I am very familiar with picking cotton. I was born the daughter of a cotton share-cropper, so my earliest memories are some of the very same things that appear in this book.

Cotton picking by hand is hard. It is backbreaking, and the days are hot and long. However, I had a few concerns about this book. It is written in the local dialect and speech patterns of the Black child who is telling the story. It was rather difficult to read but easy to understand what she meant. Since this is a child's book, I am not certain that every child would understand the language system that is portrayed. A teacher needs to be completely aware and ready to explain the dialect.

Also, even though the child describes a typical day of cotton picking, hard, hot, long,and lonely for socialization, I do wish the fact had been brought out that other ethnicities picked cotton as well as Blacks. It is hard work no matter who picks the cotton.

The illustrations were done nicely and the family structure was portrayed as intact. However, it reminded me all too well of the long, hot days my family spent in the cotton fields.

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reviews: page 1, 2

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