The Undefeated

Words by Kwame Alexander and pictures by Kadir Nelson combine to form a perfect tribute to the courageous struggles of black Americans, through time, for justice, for equality, for a good life. Children and adults alike are left deeply moved after reading this powerful story of strength and persistence and endurance in the face of decades of torment and hatred and violence. This is a book that will be read and reread and shared again and again.

Overall great illustrations, per usual. The poem is decent and good for exposure either in supplementing other curriculum or introducing black history units. It brings up the more popular historical characters as well as the lesser known. I could have done without the authors notes, in my own opinion, just because someone is of a certain ethnicity doesn't make them worth history, their character and life experiences do that. Some are not worthy and others deserve the limelight much more.

I'd recommend this one, we have it as a Kindle eBook and it is very readable on a Kindle Fire device.

Summary: An illustrated poem of the greatness of Black history with a nod to the horrors.

I pretty much only buy books that are primarily Black or other minority focused for my White children because they will get more than enough White oriented books from others. We are still not at the point with my 4 and 5 year old to be able to read this for the beauty of the poetry. We are still at the point of reading for pictures. (We have read it about a dozen times now.)

I read the words but I can't get through a line of poetry without questions or comments from the kids. There is a description in the back of who all of the people are, so adults should spend time making sure they know the characters, if not the first they they read it, at least by the 4th or 5th time they read it.

This is a book that is about overcoming and greatness in spite of the horrors. So there is a double page layout of a slave ship. And so far each time I have been asked to redescribe slavery. It is uncomfortable to talk about the reality of slavery to young children, and I am not doing into inappropriate details for their age. But they need to know that historically people that look like them did awful things to people that look like their friends at school.

The kids are starting to identify pictures. And it is books like this that empasize to me that we need multiple exposures to make connections. My daughter loves a board book of the song made famous by Louis Armstrong “What a Wonderful World”. That book she knows is the song by Louis Armstrong. We have watched videos, it is the song she usually picks to sing before bed. Last year we went to the 50 anniversary of MLK Jr's funeral. So every time we drive by the Captial Building in Atlanta, she talks about MLK becaue the march ended at the Capital building. So she knows his picture here as well.

There are lots of sports and music people, which allow me to show kids videos or play music to give them context.

The art is beautifully done.