Heart and Soul

Title: Heart and Soul: The Story of American and African Americans

Author and Illustrator: Kadir Nelson

Publishing Company: Balzer + Bray

Copyright Date: 2011

Pages: 108

Genre/Category: Nonfiction

 I chose this book to continue with my reading on African-American history. This book is sectioned into twelve different chapters of five hundred years of black history. The book describes how the Capital building in Washington D.C. is filled with pictures of white males and a few Native Americans, but there are no African Americans even though they helped build it. The book talks about the revolutionary war, in which African Americans fought, a new president, and a new country. Although African Americans helped build the Capital, most were still held as slaves. The book shares the struggles that African-Americans faced during this time and what they did to try to fix the system and gain their rights. It shares information about the civil rights along with historical contexts of what was going on with laws, people, and history during that time.

The illustrations in this book are amazing and captivating. There are single and double-page spreads throughout the book. Each illustration is done in portrait style done with oil. All the pictures correlate with every page.

This book is recommended for middle and high school levels the only thing I would do with book is use it as an extension of the social studies unit. I would use this book when discussing the Jim Crow Laws, Civil Rights, and World War II. This book would tie perfectly with the series Roots and could be used with middle school students to compare the television series with a book.  I would pair this book with Henry's Freedom Box and The History of the Underground Railroad for deeper discussions. This book has a few awards Coretta Scott King Author Award (and for Illustrator Honor Book) 2012, NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work – Children’s category.