Overview: Tar Beach is about a young girl name Cassie who imagines traveling over her rooftop building to the George Washington bridge. Cassie admires the city views and describes in poetic detail her affinity for the bridge, city, the stars and the Union building her father works at. The "tar beach" is the roof top that her family, and neighbors hangout on in the evenings as Cassie and her little brother fly around the city.
Ringgold, F. (1991). Tar beach. New York: NY. Crown Publishers, Inc.
Little Library Review: Before you actually read the words of the book you will notice the colorful and unique illustrations of the city and quilt. I find the illustrations endearing and comforting. I imagine that lots of families that grew up in an urban setting are able to make connection with the vivid pictures. The story is simple in that it is about a girl describing her family and her city but it has deep undertones of multicultural celebration. The plot is not different in that is it exploring but the setting and family and surrounding make the story stand out from others.
Other Professional Reviews: Gr 1 Up--Tar Beach is a work of modern art translated into a children's picture book, and the adaptation is so natural that it seems inevitable. From her 1988 story quilt, reproduced on the cover and within the last pages of the book, Ringgold has taken both the setting and the text. The painted scene in the center of the quilt shows a Harem rooftop on a starry night with four adults playing cards and with Cassie Louise Lightfoot and her brother, Be Be, lying on a blanket gazing at the sky. Cassie sees herself flying over the city lights; dreams of wearing the George Washington Bridge as a necklace; imagines giving her father the union building he is not allowed to join because of his half-black, haft-Indian heritage; flies over the ice cream factory; and takes her little brother with her to the sky. Cassie's story, written along the borders of the quilt in tiny script, becomes the text Of the book. The illustrations painted for the book version are done in the same colorful, naive style as the quilt. This type of art translates beautifully into the storybook format, and a border of bright fabric designs on the bottom of each page duplicates the material used in the quilt. In capturing the euphoria of a child's dreams, and in its gentle reminder of the social injustices of the adult world, the book is both universal and contemporary.
Whilton, S. (1991). Book review/ preschool & primary. School Library Journal. 37,(2), p74.
Using it in the Library đź“–: Activities of lessons that could be done with this book is visualizing and writing with sensory details. The entire book is filled with literary writing examples that student could stop jot and visualize without the pictures and sketch their picture inside their heads. This book would also be good resource for mentor sentences that use sensory details. This book also focuses a lot of the structure of the buildings and the bridge, a sensory bin with build manipulatives can create a opportunity to build their own sky skyscrapers like in the story.
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