Title: Let’s Clap, Jump, Sing & Shout
Author: Patricia C. McKissack
Illustrator: Brian Pinkney
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade Books
Publication Date: January 10, 2017
Genre/Format: Children’s Book/Folk Tales
Ages: All Ages
Let’s Clap, Jump, Sing & Shout; Dance, Spin & Turn It Out!
Synopsis:
Parents and grandparents will delight in sharing this exuberant book with the children in their lives. Here is a songbook, a storybook, a poetry collection, and much more, all rolled into one.
Find a partner for hand claps such as “Eenie Meenie Sassafreeny,” or form a circle for games like “Little Sally Walker.” Gather as a family to sing well-loved songs like “Amazing Grace” and “Oh, Freedom” or to read aloud the poetry of such African American luminaries as Langston Hughes, James Weldon Johnson, and Paul Laurence Dunbar. And snuggle down to enjoy classic stories retold by author, including Aesop’s fables and tales featuring Br’er Rabbit and Anansi the Spider.
McKissack says in the book’s introduction, “In addition to their developmental and educational benefits, storytelling, wordplay, and games have helped expose generations of African American children to folk characters and historical figures, all of which have provided a connecting thread among people of color throughout the world.” Let’s Clap, Jump, Sing & Shout; Dance, Spin & Turn It Out! brings many of the classic stories, songs, and poems of McKissack’s and many others’ childhoods together into one volume perfect for family, school and library bookshelves across the country.
About Patricia C. McKissack
Patricia C. McKissack is the author of The Dark-Thirty: Southern Tales of the Supernatural, a Newbery Honor Book and a Coretta Scott King Award Winner, and it’s companion, Porch Lies: Tales of Slicksters, Tricksters, and Other Wiley Characters, an ALA-ALSC Notable Children’s Book. Ms. McKissack has also written many award-winning picture books, including Goin’ Someplace Special, a Coretta Scott King Award Winner; Mirandy and Brother Wind, A Caldecott Honor Book, and Never Forgotten, which received five starred reviews.
About Brian Pinkney
Brian Pinkney received a Caldecott Honor for Duke Eillington by Andrea Davis Pinkney and for The Faithful Friend by Robert D. San Souci. He has illustrated many highly acclaimed books for children, including Hand in Hand: Ten Black Men Who Changed America by Andrea Davis Pinkney, a Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor Book, and In The Time of the Drums by Kim L. Siegelson, A Coretta Scott King Award Winner. He lives in Brooklyn, New York with his wife, Andrea, with whom he often collaborates, and their two children. Learn more at brianpinkney.net.
My Thoughts:
As a homeschool family, I’m always on the lookout for amazing books to add to our collection, and the recent addition of Let’s Clap, Jump, Sing & Shout has been just that. We have been using this book as part of our Black History Month study and my boys love it! A lot of the songs, stories, rhymes and games I remember from my childhood and have forgotten over the year, so it’s really fun introducing them to my boys.
With each turn of the page, you’ll find yourself singing or humming along to the songs, or remembering a childhood that was filled with fun games that were played between friends. Not only does it have a huge selection of parables, poems, songs, games, etc, but each one starts off with a short paragraph telling you more about it.
Highly recommend!
Let’s Clap, Jump, sing & Shout; Dance, Spin & Turn It Out! can be found at your local book retailer or online at stores like Amazon.
