Shelf Awareness--The 1619 Project: Born on the Water

PB Review: The 1619 Project: Born on the Water

The 1619 Project: Born on the Water by Nikole Hannah-Jones and Renée Watson, illus. by Nikkolas Smith (Kokila/Penguin, 48p., 9780593307359, November 16, 2021)

The 1619 Project: Born on the Water is both a joyful and painful ode to Black Americans whose history did not begin with the whips and chains of enslavement, but rather with a "proud origin story."

When a girl must trace her roots for an assignment at school, she tells her grandmother she is ashamed that she can track down only three generations of her family. Her grandmother gathers the family to explain. What follows is a tale of the people who, before they arrived here 400 years ago, "had a home, a place, a land"--who, before they were enslaved, were free.

When the girl's ancestors spoke, they had "their own words/ for love/ for friend/ for family." They were "good with their hands... good with their minds" and they had rich lives filled with industry and joy. "And the white people took them anyway." As her grandmother explains, this is not an immigrant story with "promises, whispered from mouth to ear,/ of seeing each other soon." The people were taken from their home and allowed "no things." But they had their "histories and bloodlines/ and drums pulsing in their veins." Packed as they were "in dark misery," kidnapped "strangers chained together," they realized that the strangers "were their people now." Thus, a new people was "born on the water," forebears of those who are fighting now for progress so that the U.S. may "live up to its promise of democracy."

Nikole Hannah-Jones and Renée Watson (Love Is a Revolution; Ways to Make Sunshine) employ a series of stirring free-verse poems that uplift as much as they devastate. Their moving words successfully shape Hannah-Jones's 2020 Pulitzer Prize-winning The 1619 Project into a picture book accessible to all ages. Artist Nikkolas Smith uses a broad range of Central West African details to craft illustrations full of movement and expansive emotion. Smith's paintings respond to the individual poems with, in his words, "a visual representation of the infectious joy, heartbreaking struggles, and triumphant legacy of my ancestors." The three creators have together produced an unflinching look at the people who were stolen from their lives, lost so much and, though repeatedly beaten back, survived in a new land. It's a story vital to the U.S.'s survival as a nation, because what the grandmother tells her family regarding their ancestors is true for everyone who lives in the U.S. today: "Their story is our story." And it needs to be heard. --Lynn Becker, reviewer, blogger, and children's book author.

Shelf Talker: This picture book account of the rich, proud origin story of Black Americans, adapted from the 2020 Pulitzer Prize-winner, is both profoundly joyful and deeply painful.