This is a truly delightful and endearing children’s picture book, very professionally put together, that deserves a wide readership. The author, Ketch Secor is a white man who founded the band, Old Crow Medicine Show while living in East Tennessee where he absorbed folktales that inspired him to write this book. He now lives in Nashville and works in film and music as well as literature. Given the name of his band, we are not surprised that a crow is a character in this book. The illustrator is an African-American woman, Higgins Bond, who also lives in Nashville. Among her honors is the Asley Bryan Award for contributions to children’s literature and being the first African-American woman to have a commissioned painting made into a U.S. postage stamp. Not surprisingly, the human characters in his book are an African-American girl living in the East Tennessee hills and her Pa Paw.
Napierville, Illinois: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky, 2018. 32 page children’s picture book illustrated in full color on every page by Higgins Bond. 10.75” X 9.75” hardback in dust jacket