In the Hollow of Your Hand: Slave Lullabies

by Alice McGill

Collects thirteen slave lullabies created from the African-American experience that evince messages of hope and empowerment, paired with quilt collage illustrations and a CD recording of the lullabies. 25,000 first printing.

Genres: African American

40 pages, Paperback

First published September 25, 2000

Reviews

[Kelly Wickham]

This book is beautifully illustrated. Michael Cummings uses such vibrant and colorful pictures that are presented like paintings. The songs represent slave times and what they sang through their struggles. The lyrics are sad, mournful, and full of anguish. To read them is to touch your soul where it is tender. It really is too painful to enjoy and it is uncomfortable to read but it is such important history of one of the worst human atrocities to exist.

[Jecel Cortes]

This book is not that good but I give it five star's because it holds a lot of history. The book is about 14 short songs that slaves would sing when they worked out in the fields. Most of the song's are lullabies for the babies to make them sleep.

[Arely Cortes]

This was a good book. Reading all the different lullabies was interesting. In most of the lullabies the same words were used over and over again. On each page there are some nice pictures. A lot of them are about kids getting little kids to to sleep.

[Talea]

I wish I had the CD that went with this book. Thankfully the written music is included in the back of the book. The stories that went with each song were powerful in their simplicity.

[S10_tommccormack]

This is a CD of oral history and songs. It is appropriate for all ages, but I think it would be most useful in 4th - 6th grade.

[CKE387]

I liked that these songs were preserved and that the pictures use another tradition by making the images using quilts.