QUOTES OF NOTE

Tom Feelings, at The Center for the Study of Children's Literature, Simmons College, 1980
"Black artists, going into any art form, including book illustration…give to that art form a humanism that is sometimes exactly the opposite of Western society’s pessimistic and cynical attitude. The attitude is based on the belief that it is impossible for any individual or the group to change for the better, that all men are inherently greedy, self-centered, and in constant battle to conquer each other or nature. For the most part I believe that our ability to endure and survive with dignity the worst kind of anti-human oppression in American history points to the fact that all human beings can hold on to their souls, through anything, and therefore can change themselves and the society they live in for the better."

Jill Paton Walsh, Children's Literature New England, 1995
"Perhaps the most famous, and most troubling, question ever asked was asked by Pilate of Jesus. 'What is truth?' he asked."

Tom Feelings, Children's Literature New England, 1990
"Will we learn from our past? Are we doomed to repeat the same mistakes? Not if we begin telling all the children the truth about this big house—this building we all live in, called the United States of America. Tell them about the climate, the atmosphere, the environment it was built on—who it was taken away from. Tell them about the true conditions those great documents of freedom were created under. Tell them the truth about the men who wrote them. Tell them all of it."