The People Could Fly, Told by Virginia Hamilton and Illustrated by Leo and Diane Dillon

  The purpose of the collection, The People Could Fly, by Virginia Hamilton, Illustrated by Leo and Diane Dillon, is to record black and african american folktales, particularly those told during the American pre-civil war era, as is clearly stated in the introduction. The tales this work chooses to tell do meet this purpose by providing stories, none of which I had ever heard before, though some of them are vaguely familiar in theme or plot. The stories are divided into sections by topic, such as “The Beautiful Girl of the Moon Tower and Other Tales of the Real, Extravagant, and Fanciful”. There are twenty four tales in this volume overall.

Source notes are at the end of each tale, and each notes the region of origin of each story, the history of the story and the history of the people who told it, and where other, similar stories may have come from, as well as any translations or origins of words used in the story. Though the writing of each story is true to the history, there are no notes indicating the illustrations’ history or accuracy. 

The narrative style of the work is certainly preserved and each story sounds like it is being told. Each has words that are spelled to indicate an accent, such as “grinnin” (Hamilton, 34). Additionally, they are told in conversational language, rather than being written in a fancy or otherwise unnecessarily formal style. 

The stories are short, at a perfect length for read aloud events at a library or at home. They are such that both an adult and child could enjoy them, though the adult may have more appreciation for their historic elements and aspects. There are twenty four tales in this volume, each with multiple illustrations and a conversational rather than formal tone. 

This book is very conducive to being read aloud, either in a group or one on one, though some are more appropriate for children than others. A few of the stories have darker themes, such as murder or intended murder. However, these darker themes are never described in a highly detailed way, instead being explained that it happened and then moving on. Certain stories may not be recommendable for story time events, but there are plenty that would be fine for such an event. 

There are forty illustrations overall in the book, each representing something from the story. I’m not sure that they enhance or are integral to the stories, however. Instead, they seem to supplement it with a picture of what is going on in the story on the opposing page or on the rest of the page. The illustrations are entirely black and white, and take up either a full or half page. 

Hamilton, V., Dillon, L., & Dillon, D. (2016). The people could fly: American black folktales. A.A. Knopf.