Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award Honor, American Library Association (ALA)
Best Books of the Year, Parenting magazine
Choices, Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC)
Firecracker Alternative Press Award, Firecracker Alternative Book Awards

When children are encouraged to celebrate their lives -- their joys, their influences, their hopes -- the results are pure poetry.

Black is dark, dark is lovely,
lovely is the palm of my heart
and my heartbeats are filled with joy

When children are encouraged to celebrate their lives - their joys, their influences, their hopes - the results are pure poetry. Honest, wise, and inspiring, each of the twenty poems in this dazzling collection resounds with the unique rhythms of life, as seen through the eyes of African American children.