LEO and DIANE DILLON, recepients of two Caldecott Medals, have illustrated five books by Virginia Hamilton, including the original black-and-white illustrations in The People Could Fly collection, Many Thousand Gone, and Her Stories. She won every major award in youth literature. Virginia described her work as Liberation Literature. Woven into her books is a deep concern with memory, tradition, and generational legacy, especially as they helped define the lives of African Americans. In her lifetime, Virginia wrote and published 41 books in multiple genres that spanned picture books and folktales, mysteries and science fiction, realistic novels and biography. Awards for The People Could Fly collection: A Coretta Scott King Award A Booklist Childrens Editors Choice A School Library Journal Best Books of the Year A Horn Book Fanfare An ALA Notable Book An NCTE Teachers Choice A New York Times Best Illustrated Childrens Books of the Year About the Author VIRGINIA HAMILTON, the first black person to win a Newbery Medal and the first childrens book author to be awarded a MacArthur genius grant, won the Coretta Scott King Award for The People Could Fly: American Black Folktales. Leo and Diane Dillons powerful illustrations accompany Hamiltons voice as it sings out from the pages with the soaring cadences that echo the story tellers of her childhood as the granddaughter of a fugitive slave. And it is a moving tale of those who did not have the opportunity to fly away, who remained slaves with only their imaginations to set them free as they told and retold this tale. It is a reissue, by the Dillons, of Hamiltons title story of her 1985 book The People Could Fly: American Black Folktales and is about a group of African-American slaves who call upon old magic to escape their oppression by flying away. Book Synopsis Virginia Hamiltons Coretta Scott King Honor book is the breathtaking fantasy tale of slaves who possessed ancient magic that enabled them to fly away to freedom. The People Could Fly: The Picture Book is a 2004 picture book by Virginia Hamilton and illustrated by Leo and Diane Dillon. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Childrens Books, New York, in 1985, and subsequently published in different form by Alfred A. About the Book Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A.

The people could fly picture book