The events will kick off with a symposium at New York University on September 11 featuring the book’s editors and Baldwin’s niece and nephew in conversation with several scholars. On her blog Ms Yingling Reads, school librarian Karen Yingling says the book will be a great teaching tool “because it is a rare primary source snapshot of a particular place and time.” We are offering a free Teacher Resource Guide that aligns with Common Core standards.Īlthough it is available everywhere now, the book will be officially launched in New York City from September 11-14 with several great events open to the public. Teachers and librarians are praising it as well. it does not disappoint!” The book has been positively reviewed in People Magazine, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, School Library Journal, and Shelf Awareness.

Little Man, Little Man has also been praised by Levar Burton, who says, “The prospect of reading an out-of-print children’s book by none other than James Baldwin himself is as tantalizing an invitation as I have ever been offered. “It’s a book that young people can read or have read to them, but it’s also a new Baldwin for adults.” “Now that we have a children’s book, we can start people off even younger,” she told them. The Times notes that the reissue “could scarcely be more timely” and interviews author Jacqueline Woodson about the book. In it we not only see life in 1970s Harlem from a black child’s perspective, but we also gain a fuller appreciation of the genius of one of America’s greatest writers.Įditor Nicholas Boggs told the New York Times about his discovery of an old copy of Little Man, Little Man in Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library in the 1990s, when he was an undergraduate. “It wasn’t like anything else he’s written, and the more I read it, it wasn’t like anything else I’d read,” he told the Times, and it led him to begin a campaign to get the book republished.

Little Man, Little Man celebrates and explores the challenges and joys of black childhood. Now available for the first time in forty years, this new edition of Little Man, Little Man-which retains the charming original illustrations by French artist Yoran Cazac-includes a foreword by Baldwin’s nephew Tejan “TJ” Karefa-Smart and an afterword by his niece Aisha Karefa-Smart, with an introduction by Baldwin scholars Nicholas Boggs and Jennifer DeVere Brody. Today is the official publication date for the republication of James Baldwin’s only children’s book Little Man, Little Man: A Story of Childhood.

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