Gr. 3-6. The lonely child's search for home is the center of this touching picture book about Langston Hughes. In the first book that artist Cooper has written as well as illustrated, he combines large, soft-textured, earth-tone paintings with a warm, immediate storytelling voice. Dreamy words and pictures express the boy's yearning for a "home with his ma and pa. A home he would never have to leave." There are close-ups of his strong grandmother (who told him family stories of pride and glory) as well as views of his loving foster home and of the streets of Kansas City, where the child heard the "jazzy old blues music that drifted down the alleys and tickled his soul." Like Hughes' poetry, the power of Cooper's story is that it confronts the sadness even as it transcends it. Children like Hughes who dream of a "real home" will take heart from the story of the boy who found community and grew up to write astonishing poetry about it. Some of that poetry has recently been reissued in The Dream Keeper. Hazel Rochman --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Kirkus Reviews
Langston Hughes's father lived in Mexico, finding it difficult to get work as an attorney in America because he was black, and Hughes's actress mother was often absent. The future author spent his early childhood with his grandmother in Lawrence, Kans. She was poor, often serving him dandelion greens, and she didn't like Langston playing with the neighborhood kids. So he watched for trains, the old rusty cars of which were ``talking, talking,'' and dreamed about riding on one in search of a home. He began to find a home in a variety of different places, including ``a blues song sung in the pale evening night on a Kansas City street corner.'' Newcomer Cooper's rich illustrations with a wealth of day-to-day details enhance the story--at the end of which Langston, now a world-renowned author, discovers that he ``never had a home like most people. Home was in him.'' A book of generous, but muted, feeling, animated by a central question: What is home? (Author's note; bibliography) (Nonfiction/Picture book. 4-10) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
![Coming Home by [Floyd Cooper]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51GX606eFuL._SX260_.jpg)
