SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
A new picture book called "That You Are Here Is No Small Thing" guides children through Black American history, from West Africa and enslavement through the Civil Rights Movement to today. It started with a trip to Senegal and Ghana and the work of one of science fiction's most esteemed writers, Octavia Butler. Here's NPR's Jason Fuller.
JASON FULLER, BYLINE: When Traci Todd treated herself to a birthday trip to West Africa's coast back in 2023, she knew this trip, her first to the continent, would be memorable. For starters, it was her 50th birthday trip. But also because she wanted to see for herself where and what her ancestors endured, starting with the slave castles and dungeons, remnants of the transatlantic slave trade.
TRACI TODD: I'd always understood sort of how - what an amazing thing it is that Black Americans survive and that Black Americans who are the descendants of enslaved Africans are here and that we continue and our culture continues. But when I went to Senegal and Ghana and saw those places, it just really sort of drove it home for me.
FULLER: Todd felt compelled to write a book for children underscoring how every act and breath they take is miraculous, no small thing. To do that, she coupled her trip experience with contemporary Black American narratives - narratives that speak to the past, present and future.
TODD: The creation stories and the stories that come from Indigenous, West and Central Africa. We might think of them as mythology or folk tales, but they are stories that have been passed down, stories of Anansi, stories of the people who fly from Virginia Hamilton's work. And then once I had something that felt close to the story that I wanted to tell, Vashti was the very first person I thought of.
VASHTI HARRISON: Traci has really lovely evocative text and language that references the history and future and the past and the present, references to Octavia Butler.
FULLER: Vashti Harrison is an award-winning illustrator who collaborated with Todd on the book.
HARRISON: And I want to make the kinds of illustrations that pull a kid in, link history together, but also take them on an adventure.
FULLER: In the book, three young people travel through time and space thanks to heavily winged beings who give them a lift.
TODD: (Reading) We come from the people who fly, and that is true.
FULLER: Pages later, the children witness ancestors carried to a, quote, "wretched new place, drawing on glory and grace to survive and even thrive."
HARRISON: (Reading) We fished and farmed and counted stars, adorned ourselves in gold and scarves in many colors beyond imagining.
TODD: (Reading) And as we raised empires from dust and clay, we danced to keep our grandfathers close. We sang to keep our grandmothers near.
FULLER: Harrison calls these kinds of picture books, richly illustrated with lyrical storytelling, lap boooks.
HARRISON: The books that you sit with a kid on your lap and you go through, and you look at the little details and you read it over and over again.
TODD: The passing of things down, the passing of the word orally, that is also an important aspect of this. Bedtime is important, but the story telling, the sort of griot aspect for me is really, really what I was getting at here.
FULLER: Ultimately, "That You Are Here Is No Small Thing" encourages children to dream expansively about their histories and futures.
HARRISON: You know, we don't know who these children are. We don't know what they're doing. But that act of going to bed and peeking one eye out and thinking, maybe I might go on an adventure tonight, that feels universal.
FULLER: Because, as the author's note says, this book is the smallest hint of all there is to tell for the children who come from a shared past.
Jason Fuller, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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