HARLEM

Picture book read-alongs are ostensibly geared toward the preschool set, but Harlem will be most resonant for teens and adults, though, if we're lucky, it will encourage children to want to know who Langston and Lady Day were. Walter Dean Myers's Caldecott Honor and Coretta Scott King Award-winning poem, a tribute to the cultural center that is Harlem, is told in the meter of the streets and stoops. Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis are deep and smooth, reverent and playful as they narrate back and forth. The story experience is accompanied by Christopher Myers's beautiful and complex collage illustrations and background music, which moves from African drums to a church organ to a lone clarinet. This book is family listening sure to inspire discussion of Myers's ultimately hopeful vision. J.M.D. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine [Published: FEB/MAR 01]