#938 of 1001 · February 25, 2023

Patricia C. McKissack and Leo and Diane Dillon craft a stunning work of magical realism in Never Forgotten. The story is set in eighteenth-century Mali. After his wife dies, a Mende blacksmith named Dinga vows to raise their newborn son on his own. To help him with the task, he invokes the four elements—Earth Mother, Fire Woman, Water Maiden, and Wind Spirit. The boy grows up happy and carefree, apprenticed to his father. One day, tragedy strikes: Musafa is kidnapped and sold into slavery. The elements are able to follow and bring back reports of the terrible things they have witnessed, but they can do nothing to intervene. Dinga is devastated. Years later, Wind Spirit returns with the news that Musafa is alive and working as a blacksmith in Charleston, providing his father a small morsel of comfort, though the two will never be reunited. McKissack’s text, in the form of elegiac prose poems, takes an unflinching look at the horrors of the slave trade. In their masterful acrylic and watercolor art, the Dillons never allow the beauty of the supernatural imagery to palliate the nightmarish truth of history. #neverforgotten #father #son #family #love #book #books #childrensbooks #beautifulbook #beautifulbooks #beautifulbookcover #beautifulbookcovers #picturebook #picturebooks #picturebookillustration #picturebookart #childrensbookillustration #childrensliterature #illustration #kidlit #kidsbooks #bookworm #booklover #booklovers #bibliophile #bookstagram #bookstagrammer #bookstagrammers #instabook #instabooks