Creation

by James Weldon Johnson, illustrated by Carla Golembe. (Little, 1993 ISBN 0316467448. Order Online.) Picture Book. Grade 3+.
This review by Carol Otis Hurst first appeared in Teaching K-8 Magazine.

Review

Here's new illustrations and an old poem, both of which are beautifully combined. I remember doing the poem as part of a choral performance in college and it stirred me then as it does now -- the wonderful retelling of the Biblical story by the great Black poet. The images: the darkness was "Blacker than a hundred midnights down in a cypress swamp"; God clapped his hands "And the waters above the earth came down, the cooling waters came down". Johnson's God is a humanized one and therefore an understandable one. The illustrations like the poem are simple and childlike with bold colors and clear images. This is a book for a family to share.