Spoiler-free summary: An illustrated poem that pays tribute to the history of black Americans and encourages future generations.
Discussion: I said in my post this year going over some of the Newbery contenders that I am bad at judging poetry and picture books, and this one is both. When you’re gauging contributions to children’s literature, how do you weigh a single poem in comparison to a novel? Picture books have won the Newbery; The Last Stop on Market Street was the most recent, in 2016. I get a picture book as an Honor, seeing it as a sort of variety pick, but I just didn’t grasp why that one was so far ahead of any other picture book to be considered the year’s best book of any type.
Anyway, The Undefeated was a very lauded book. It’s one of the rare Newbery/Caldecott dual winners – no book has won both, but a handful have done the medal in one and an honor in the other, and this was a Caldecott winner. On top of that, it won a Coretta Scott King Award for its illustrations, it was on the National Book Award longlist, and probably won a bucket of other smaller awards. It’s a powerful poem, with a striking art and layout style from Kadir Nelson. It definitely has aspirations higher than your average picture book, and it achieves them.
Up next is my first of three Mary and Conrad Buff books, Big Tree.
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