Day 110. Jerry Pinkney

I was flipping through my copy of Julius Lester's version of the Brer Rabbit tales, with all those gorgeous illustrations by Jerry Pinkney. His depictions of the animals are wonderful, but what's really remarkable is the way he draws Miss Meadows and the gals, along with Mr. Man and the other human characters, as African American. Every time I see a white Miss Meadows, it just feels so wrong. I wish so much that Pinkney's illustrations were in the public domain. Maybe someday I can afford to hire an artist to draw some illustrations for the stories like these, where the human characters do not get "defaulted" to being white...

Brer Rabbit Falls in Love

So much better than the usual 19th-century illustrations for white audiences:

(illustration by Church)