Centennial Celebration of the Brownies' Book

Contributions by Jani L. Barker Rudine Sims Bishop Julia S. Charles-Linen Paige Gray Dianne Johnson-Feelings Jonda C. McNair Sara C. VanderHaagen and Michelle Taylor Watts <p/><i>The Brownies' Book</i> occupies a special place in the history of African American children's literature. Informally the children's counterpart to the NAACP's <i>The Crisis</i> magazine it was one of the first periodicals created primarily for Black youth. Several of the objectives the creators delineated in 1919 when announcing the arrival of the publication--To make them familiar with the history and achievements of the Negro race and To make colored children realize that being 'colored' is a beautiful normal thing--still resonate with contemporary creators readers and scholars of African American children's literature. <p/> The meticulously researched essays in <i>A Centennial Celebration of The Brownies' Book </i>get to the heart of <i>The Brownies' Book</i> project using critical approaches both varied and illuminating. Contributors to the volume explore the underappreciated role of Jessie Redmon Fauset in creating <i>The Brownies' Book</i> and in the cultural life of Black America; describe the young people who immersed themselves in the pages of the periodical; focus on the role of Black heroes and heroines; address <i>The Brownies' Book</i> in the context of critical literacy theory; and place <i>The Brownies' Book</i> within the context of Black futurity and justice. Bookending the essays are reprinted in full the first and last issues of the magazine. <p/><i>A Centennial Celebration of The Brownies' Book</i> illuminates the many ways in which the magazine--simultaneously beautiful complicated problematic and inspiring--remains worthy of attention well into this century.