Sugar Hill: Harlem's Historic Neighborhood

By Carole Boston Weatherford and R. Gregory Christie

CCBC Choices 2015
Best History/Non-fiction Picture Book of 2014, The Huffington Post
2015 Jefferson Cup Overfloweth
2016 Arnold Adoff Early Readers Poetry Award, Honor Book

Take a walk through Harlem's Sugar Hill and meet all the amazing people who made this neighborhood legendary.

With upbeat rhyming, read-aloud text, Sugar Hill celebrates the Harlem neighborhood that successful African Americans first called home during the 1920s. Children raised in Sugar Hill not only looked up to these achievers but also experienced art and culture at home, at church, and in the community. Books, music lessons, and art classes expanded their horizons beyond the narrow limits of segregation. Includes brief biographies of jazz greats Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Sonny Rollins, and Miles Davis; artists Aaron Douglas and Faith Ringgold; entertainers Lena Horne and the Nicholas Brothers; writer Zora Neale Hurston; civil rights leader W. E. B. DuBois and lawyer Thurgood Marshall.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Albert Whitman & Company
• Release date: Feb 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9780807576519

Carole Boston Weatherford

Carole Boston Weatherford is the author of numerous award-winning books. Her picture book BOX: Henry Brown Mails Himself to Freedom, illustrated by Michele Wood received a Newbery Honor. Unspeakable: The Tulsa Race Massacre, illustrated by the late Floyd Cooper, was a National Book Award longlist title, won the Coretta Scott King Award for author and illustrator, and received a Caldecott Honor and a Sibert Honor. When she's not traveling or visiting museums, Carole is mining the past for family stories, fading traditions, and forgotten struggles. She lives in North Carolina.

Book preview

Reviews for Sugar Hill

[rosa.mill · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Great artwork, nice rhyming scheme and good historical notes at the end made me happy.

[bmalon6 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was a fun, entertaining book that I thoroughly enjoyed. The main message of this book is to inform children of the wonderful old historic neighborhood, Harlem. It also provides great inside into a different culture. I liked this book because of the rhyming words. For example one page stated," Sugar hill, sugar hill where life if sweet and the Nicholas brothers rest their feet." Rhyming words are a fun way to read and are also great for emerging readers. I also liked the illustrations. They were big, fun pictures. This made the story really come to life and the reader is able to really imagine what life if like in Harlem. The one thing I did not like about the book was the way the author set up the words. One page the words would be in several different fonts and all over the place. Some words would be going diagonal, vertical, and squiggly. This could make it really difficult for children to follow and read.

[herethere-3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Love this walk back in time to what Sugar Hill once was and the people that lived there. Great history that shows the wide range of black americans who contributed in important ways to arts, music, and science. The illustrations are fun and it would be a great way to get kids to look at the idea of community and neighborhoods.

[nbmars · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book of poetry is focused on Sugar Hill, a neighborhood in Harlem in the early twentieth century that was the center of black culture during the Harlem Renaissance. Famous residents included Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Lena Horne, Zora Neale Hurston, W.E.B. Dubois, and Thurgood Marshall.The very short poems feature these famous people in lines like these:“Where Robeson puts down roots a whileand Sonny Rollins hangs with Miles.”“Where DuBois outlines social tractsand Thurgood Marshall plots legal attacks.”No indication whatsoever is given about who these people are until an Author’s Note and “Who’s Who” at the end of the book, clearly intended for adults.Illustrator R. Gregory Christie is the perfect choice for this story. His spare modernist art style tends to be “jazzy,” and here he mixes bright colors and interesting perspective work to create interest.It would not be possible, however, to read this without an adult, and even many adults will be flipping back and forth to the “Who’s Who” to match the bios with the text.