StreetScenes
2010
The author and illustrator of Sit-In enthrall School for Children students and honor a 50th anniversary
Author Andrea Davis Pinkney addresses Bank Street students about the making of their book.
On the morning of February 22, SFC upper and middle school classes filed into the Bank Street Tabas Auditorium for a stirring encounter with author Andrea Davis Pinkney and illustrator Brian Pinkney, a husband-and-wife team whose book, Sit-In: How four friends stood up by sitting down, was just published, 50 years after the event it describes began. It tells the story of the four black college students who, on February 1, 1960, began a peaceful and ultimately successful sit-in at the Woolworth's "Whites Only" lunch counter in Greensboro, NC.
After an introduction by Lisa Von Drasek, Bank Street Children's Librarian, Andrea and Brian talked about their personal creative processes and how their book came to be, and encouraged the students to work at their own creative processes. If you want to get really good at something, each stressed, you must practice, practice, and practice. Both Pinkneys come from artistic and literary families, and Brian's father, Jerry Pinkney, just won the prestigious Caldecott Medal for his book, The Lion and the Mouse.
Illustrator Brian Pinkney urges students to develop their own creativity.
Andrea began by leading the students in singing a Civil Rights anthem, a gospel song called "This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine." She emphasized that to let their own "lights" shine the students always should pay attention to all their thoughts and dreams. She herself started each day by focusing on her "light" and on things that made her happy. Later, she wrote down ideas in her notebook. Even later, she transferred them to her computer.
Brian, who also writes as well as illustrates books, noted being inspired as a child when he visited his father's studio. As he and his father talked, his father kept working - a lesson he took to heart. In school, his teachers encouraged him to use his art in homework assignments, in class, and for special projects. When he is at work in his studio, he takes a break after about twenty minutes, and rests by reading, watching TV, or playing a drum: which he happened to have with him and played for the students.
Also in the audience was Brian's sister, Troy Pinkney-Ragsdale, Director of Bank Street's Child Life Program in the Graduate School.
Andrea and Brian detailed the long process of creating their book, Sit-In: How four friends stood up by sitting down. First, they did lots of research: what the four students looked like, what the lunch counter looked like, the waitresses' outfits, that the students passed the time waiting to be served by studying, that people shouted at them and poured coffee on them, and how the police came, etc. They also tried to imagine how it would feel if no one would serve either of them at Tom's Diner, across from Bank Street. Most importantly, they kept in mind how the students had been inspired by Martin Luther King's words: "We must... meet hate with love." And also how the students' "simple, small action" made such a big difference, sparking similar sit-ins at other lunch counters, bus stations, swimming pools, and libraries as people, both black and white, came together to help end racial discrimination.
Author Andrea Davis Pinkney and illustrator Brian Pinkney hold up their book, Sit-In: How Four Friends Stood Up by Sitting Down.
Published by Little, Brown, the book is available at the Bank Street Book Store >>>
Lisa Von Drasek, Bank Street Children's Librarian, introduces the Pinkneys and their book.
