SuitabookEllington Was Not a Street
Ntozake Shange, Kadir Nelson
- Reading
- Read the poem aloud slowly, pausing to study each spread. Use the author’s note to clarify names and historical references, then invite the child to compare what the words say with what the paintings show.
- Themes
- Black community and cultural achievement: Influential Black artists, thinkers and activists gather in the poet’s family home, where their work and fellowship are remembered. The book presents this favourably.
- Racism and resistance: The people remembered lived under rules and practices that restricted where Black people could live, what schools they could attend, and where they could sit on a bus or in a movie theatre. These restrictions are presented as adversity, while the people’s achievements and collective action are linked with a movement that changed the world.
- Memory and the child’s viewpoint: A child observes the adults visiting the family home, while the illustrations revisit the poet at different stages of childhood. The child’s perspective makes the historical figures feel present within family life, though the remembrance also carries a solemn sense of what has passed.
- Worth knowing
- Some passages refer to racism enforced through housing, education, and restrictions on where people could sit on buses or in movie theatres. The treatment is concise and historically framed, so children may benefit from a calm explanation of what those restrictions meant.