Picture Books

The Great Migration: Journey to the North

Picture book. By Eloise Greenfield. Illustrated by Jan Spivey Gilchrist. 2011. 32 pages.
A picture book that introduces the historic story of the Great Migration to young readers.

Time Periods: 20th Century, 1910, 1920
Themes: African American

Here is a picture book that introduces the historic story of the Great Migration to young readers. Eloise Greenfield, one of the most important children’s book writers of the last 40 years, wrote about her family migration from Parmele, North Carolina, to Washington, D.C., in Childtimes: A Three Generation Memoir for upper elementary school.

Now she has collaborated with Jan Spivey Gilchrist to describe the push factors and the journey north to an even younger audience.  Gilchrist’s stunning collages make you want to stop and soak in each page. For everyone who was gripped by Isabel Wilkerson’s Warmth of Other Suns, you will be moved once again as you read Greenfield and Gilchrist’s story of the journey that transformed the lives of so many people and so many cities in this country.

ISBN: 9780061259210 | Amistad/HarperCollins