Working Cotton (1992) by Sherley Anne Williams received a Caldecott honor medal. On the cover, a young Black girl stares directly at the reader, her arms full of cotton, as she sits in an endless field that engulfs her. What I see are smooth, somewhat blurred depictions that whitewash a brutal reality. The author's note does not mention slavery. Instead, she writes that "our shame as a nation is not that so many children work the fields but that’s so few of them have other options."
This book preserves a dialect, e.g., "it be cold cold cold the sun be out soon daddy say burn off this fog", and "daddy's cutting sack so long, they have to fold it double to weigh it. Take a long time to empty his sack into the trailer." The illustrations are riveting. They draw us in close enough to guess at the life of these field workers, but not so close as to look away from the harsh conditions.
There is a note that the illustrations by Carole M. Byard were done in acrylic paints on Stonehedge white paper.
