ALA Booklist (Sun Sep 01 00:00:00 CDT 1996)

for reading aloud. This visually stimulating oversize book conveys a strong sense of family history, rooted in artist Wood's African American heritage. Revealing details of Wood's own life along the way, the first-person text, written by Igus, takes readers on a pictorial journey that imagines how and where Wood's ancestors lived and what they were like. Wood's strong paintings reveal people well rooted and powerful; Igus's story intertwines the personal with the history of a people who were transported to America and enslaved, who then sharecropped, and later, who left the land to work on railroads and in steel mills. The detailed, full-color illustrations are rich in symbolism and have a strong visual rhythm that sweeps the eye from pattern to pattern. The story chronology jumps around, but readers will still finish this with a sense of pleasure and feel Wood's pride as she goes back home. (Reviewed Sept. 15, 1996)

Horn Book (Mon Apr 01 00:00:00 CST 1996)

Igus adopts Michele Wood's voice, providing a first person narrative to accompany Wood's autobiographical paintings. Showing her family's history from Africa and slavery to the present, the paintings are heavy with symbols that are explained in the text. Some of the most intriguing details, such as why she often paints faces in several bright colors, are not explained, however.

Kirkus Reviews

Igus (Two Mrs. Gibsons, p. 448) creates a warm first-person narration for Wood's art, reading as much like an exhibition program with interpretive notes as it does a history of the artist's family in the South. Although the chronicle is highly personal, it evokes universal echoes; the histories of many turn-of-the-century sharecroppers follow the same path. The bold, symbol-laden paintings grew from stories heard by the artist, as well as her journey south to gain a sense of the place her ancestors left a half-century earlier. The text interprets the images in light of the stories; the result is a visually vibrant, factual book that's sure to appeal to children of diverse ethnicities. (Picture book/nonfiction. 4-10)"