One More River to Cross: An African American Photograph Album [Hardcover]

Walter Dean Myers (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1999 | Age Level: 9 and up | Grade Level: 4 and up

Spanning the past century and a half, a collection of intimate photographs--some of them never seen outside private family albums--traces the public and private history of ordinary and extraordinary black Americans. National ad/promo. Tour.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Winner of the Golden Kite Award from the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, One More River to Cross is essentially a photographic history of black America. Walter Dean Myers, a celebrated writer of young adult books, writes that he wanted to show black Americans as they're not always shown. Thus there are photographs of former slaves, black soldiers in the Civil War, black cowboys, baseball players, sailors, aviators, farmers, field hands, and just plain folks. Myers's text is minimal, leaving the emphasis on the photographs, which are sometimes haunting and sometimes inspiring, but always moving. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

This eloquent photoessay, built around hundreds of black-and-white photographs (many from the author's own collection) tells an extraordinary history; a dramatic spread with photos of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Dubois is followed by images of a school band and friends taking a swim; scenes from the Great Migration give way to portraits of the artists of the Harlem Renaissance. For readers young and old. Ages 9-12. (Nov.)r
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 9 and up
  
• Hardcover
• Publisher: Perfection Learning (October 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0756907241
• ISBN-13: 978-0756907242
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,933,658 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Walter Dean Myers is a New York Times bestselling and critically acclaimed author who has garnered much respect and admiration for his fiction, nonfiction, and poetry for young people. Winner of the first Michael L. Printz Award, he is considered one of the preeminent writers for children. He lives in Jersey City, New Jersey, with his family.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Snapshots of a lost legacy in America..., November 9, 2006

By 

J. Campbell (Fresno, Texas) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: One More River to Cross: An African American Photograph Album (Paperback)

One More River to Cross, by Walter Dean Myers displays endless research that is organized revealing a brillant reflection of Black American portraits in such a pique way that the historical snapshots reveal the struggles to freedom that led to hope and resilent faith in the promise land America the Beautiful.

Excellent photographs that capture the emotional ties of the past to the present.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Stunning Chronicle of Americans!, January 15, 2005

By 

Reginald D. Garrard "the G-man" (Camilla, GA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: One More River to Cross: An African American Photograph Album (Hardcover)

Highly successful and popular children's author Walter Dean Myers has crafted a work of strength and power as he takes the reader on a photographic journey of the African-American from slavery to the present. The photographs assembled, mixed with the author's prose, effectively exhibit the numerous triumphs and tragedies that have been a part of the African-American experience.

Scenes of blacks toiling in the South's cotton fields are blended with rare looks at the black soldier throughout the various conflicts of which this country was involved. There are pictures of the famous (Madame C. J. Walker, Duke Ellington, and Joe Louis, to name a few) interspersed with the not so famous (members of an old "Negro League" baseball team, an unnamed soldier in the rice paddies of Viet Nam, to cite just two).

Professionals do some of the pictures while the amateur for family remembrances has taken others. It is no wonder that the book received a Golden Kite honor award, an accolade presented to authors by authors and artists.

This book comes highly recommended for its historical significance as well as its artistic and social merit.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Historic Photographs of African-American Experience, June 25, 2001

By 

--corinne-- (Virginia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: One More River to Cross: An African American Photograph Album (Hardcover)

This book is woooonnnnderful!! You will not be sorry you bought this book. One-of-a-kind.

This is a story told through photographs, with text providing some framework for the pictures. Dignified, moving, insightful. The photographs date back to the 1800s and focus specifically on photographs of African-Americans. Only the very last few pages of the album have contemporary photographs of adults and children.

There are formal portraits of black families in their finest attire, pictures of black intellectuals, candid pictures of black families, children, social life, families on their homesteads, in large metropolitan cities, working in fields, upper-class black people.

More photographs than I have ever seen before of past generations of African-Americans in all of their variety. Photographs are worth a thousand words; more clear and illuminating than a dry volume of essays on the African-American experience. This history is in living color.

I have seen some libraries classify this album as a children's book, but it is not one. This is a full-size album, with stories told through photographs. This is a book to show to your children, to display and to cherish. A beautiful record of the past.