D is for Drinking Gourd

D is for Drinking Gourd: An African American Alphabet by Nancy I. Sanders and illustrated by E. B. Lewis caught my attention because I had recently read Gathering the Sun, another cultural alphabet book. I also absolutely loved the cover image.

The inside of the book has art consistent with the style that caught my attention on the cover. Aside from the art, another aspect that I loved right away was that each page told part of history and/or contributions that African Americans have made in the US. Letters featured a range of aspects such as: Harlem Renaissance, inventors, jazz, the Little Rock Nine, athletes, organizations, and holidays. Some pages had celebratory tones, while others were more somber, sharing difficult aspects of history.

With the letter A, the left hand side of the two-page spread had four lines of poetry, "'Let our people go!' they cried / in speeches or with a pen in hand. / A is for abolitionists / who were willing to take a stand." The featured letter, A, was in a larger font to catch the reader's attention. The water color image spanned the two page spread, but about 1/3 of the right hand page was set off by a solid background color. It had the featured letter in upper and lower case in large text, followed by more historical information in smaller font than the rest of the page. Many of the pages followed this same set up, while others featured two letters, each with the same components on a single page, rather than the double-page spread. As such the lay-out of the book was crisp, consistent.


When I got to letter E, I realized that at least 2 of the four lines of each of the poetry rhymed. As such, there is another added layer to the text, including both poetry and expository writing, making it a perfect mentor text for multi-genre writing.


I always love books like this when I find them because they can be read and enjoyed in multiple ways for multiple age groups and reading levels. For example, it is perfectly fine for some readers to simply read the left hand statements, while others will read all of the text, and some might elect to read the right hand text for the information that especially piques their interest.

While this book is appropriate for older primary readers, it would also provide a lot of background information for older students. For example, I can picture it being valuable for middle schoolers interested in any of the various aspects of history mentioned in the book. When reading the information correlated with the letter F, discussing African American's role in wars in the US, I thought about how it would complement books such as Laurie Halse Anderson's Chains. Other pages made me think of Christopher Paul Curtis' books. This is a book that I will want to buy a copy of for my 6th-8th grade classroom library!