“Tar Beach” is certainly a memorable book that children will love to read!Īfter reading this book, I started taking an interest in the art of creating stories through quilts! Faith Ringgold has done an excellent job at both illustrating and writing this story about the life of an African-American girl during the 1930s. I have actually seen this book on an episode of “Reading Rainbow” and I thought that this book was great! “Tar Beach” is a Caldecott Honor Book and Coretta Scott King Honor Book by Faith Ringgold that is about a young girl named Cassie Louise Lightfoot who tells the audience about how she flies in the sky over the city and relates her tale to the audience. He thought it was cool flying around the city, but he said it was a little boring too so he gave this 3 stars. The niece thought this was beautiful and she liked the flying girl in the story too. It’s also the answer to the age old question, ‘what superpower would you want if you could have powers?’ Yes, I want to fly. I always dreamed of flying as a child too, maybe for different reasons, but wanting to be free as well.

I love the story about flying and freedom. We see the quilt squares around the edges of the page. This was also made into a quilt, well it was a quilt first and then Faith developed it into this story. Faith has written this story out of her own days of laying on the rooftop and looking at the stars on summer nights and flying over the city. It is an African American tradition I learned from this book. The theme of flying as metaphor for freedom and being free is used to wonderful effect here. This is a little memoir set in 1930s Harlem.

Faith ringgold tar beach art