Mirandy and Brother Wind

• Title: Mirandy and Brother Wind
• Author: Patricia C. McKissack
• Illustrator: Jerry Pinkey
• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House
• Publication year: 1988
• Brief Summary: From Penguin Random House-“In this Caldecott Honor and Coretta Scott King Award winning tale, Mirandy is determined to capture the best partner for the junior cakewalk jubilee. And who is the best partner? The wind, of course!”
• Ideas for using this book in classroom or library –I found another blog, EDU 320 Children’s Literature Review, from Illinois Wesleyan University, that explains how this book could be used in a social sciences class and in a history class.
• Whatever additional notes you’d like to add about this book and why you liked or didn’t like it – The watercolor illustrations from Pinkey lend to the dreamlike, fairy tale like quality of the story. According to the author’s note, this story was inspired by McKissack’s grandparents and cakewalks, a dance originating from enslaved persons. I think this and McKissack’s regional dialect in the text make this a uniquely diverse picture book folktale.