by Sam Juliano
Lush, exquisite and painterly there is no picture book released in 2019 as beautiful as Going Down Home with Daddy, a celebration of family from the extraordinary Daniel Minter. The artist’s modus operandi is acrylic wash which seems to be an inspired artistic choice for author Kelly Starling Lyon’s dreamy prose for this soulful and sensory impressionist fever dream. If the sole criteria for winning the Caldecott Medal is pictorial resplendence then Minter should be showered in gold. However as insiders well know the awards are given for interaction between the art and the words unless the subject is wordless in which case the yardstick is the manner the art replaces the prose. Yet, this inspired collaboration pushes all the Caldecott buttons while serving as an indelible showcase for Minter’s frame-worthy art which talented students and adults may find too alluring not to revisit for the irresistible visual immersion. Minter himself scored mightily not once but twice in 2019, with his allegorical and incandescent historical work The Women Who Caught the Babies exhibiting gorgeous paintings that have had many amazed at the inconceivably high level of art possible in today’s children’s literature.
Minter’s rich textures usher in Going Down Home with Daddy with a vivid burnished front cover depiction of four young African-Americans in a scene from the text proper heading over to a farmyard location carrying some creative samples. Lyons’ reunion morning, when the family packed to leave for a road trip down south compellingly recalls the Caldecott Honor winning collaboration from Cynthia Rylant and Stephen Gamell titled The Relatives Came, which is a festive account of northern state kin taking an annual trip south to immerse with a boisterous clan with similar taste in how to have a good time. At the end of that life-affirming tale the departing family head up with dreams about their next visit, which is achingly paralleled in the Lyons-Minter collaboration. The artist’s bleeding blue wash represents an introduction to a beloved relative’s favorite color, a scheme sustained in the silhouette-laden car ride depiction which Lyons evocatively describes through the eyes of Lil Alan: I watch as we drive from city streets to flowing highways under a sweep of sparkling stars. Minter responds to this nocturnal prose depiction with the bleeding colors of dusk and the close-ups of two of the vehicle’s passengers, one haunted by a perceived failure to share something.
A yellow landscape denotes the arrival of a new day and the artist depicts the family matriarch scattering corn to a flock of chickens, shown in varying designs in front of a modest wood-frame house across the dirt road from a silo and a tractor store. Granny’s attendance with this activity is described as something markedly obsessive since upon their previous departure she was similarly engaged. A white outlined vine on a blue background and Granny’s ubiquitous dress stand out from seemingly sedate rural environs. Granny’s partiality for peppermint surfaces in the initial embrace with her grandchildren where the author conveys the old adage that absence makes the heart grow fonder, and in a series of brown on yellow vignettes, one amplified by color, the blissful re-connections register with acute amorousness and playful banter. In the aforementioned barnyard visit young Alan gets to hear what his sister and two cousins are planning for this jovial affair and each make a contribution of great cultural significance. Alan’s sister plans to sing Grandma’s favorite song “His Eye is on the Sparrow”, a faith-inspired gospel hymn written right after the turn of the twentieth century and immortalized by Ethel Waters and cousin Isaiah is preparing to read the famous Langston Hughes poem “Mother to Son”, once recited by Martin Luther King Jr. which is a metaphorical verse about life’s incessant difficulties, one equated with “climbing a staircase.” Another cousin Devin has constructed a scrapbook in Granny’s favorite color, but Alan is only rescued from embarrassment when she interrupts to sponsor a tractor ride. Winter’s depiction is white-lined cotton configurations and the animated figure of Dad who speaks of life experiences with their now-deceased Grandpa. The artist’s smeared abstract canvas gives a visual heft to memories, with bleeding hearts to denote a sense of loss but an abiding love for family. The tapestry is emotionally powerful.
With some lingering strains of Sherman Alexie’s Thunder Boy Jr. Dad and son converse in a small clearing on what the latter must do to make a meaningful contribution. Again Minter, in part to a response to the father’s advice to his son, brings in the cupid shapes in a double page canvas splashed with yellow, orange and blue in what comes off as a quietly meditative encounter. Daddy passes down his own father’s advice to his own son urging him to “Think with your heart.” Lyons’ subsequent description of the dining room spread attests to food as a common ground in camaraderie and a vital life connection: The dining room overflows with love-made dishes – smoked turkey, collards, mac and cheese, okra and tomatoes, and biscuits oozing with mayhaw jelly. Grandpa adds “Nothing is more important than family” as family members evoked in their guiding force’s color of choice close their eyes in thanks. Minter’s ornate clothes design dominate the tapestry to emphasize the creativity of the individual. The arrival of Sunday morning induces Alan to realize that time is running out for him, but at least temporarily his attention is focused on attending mass, a ritual Granny is loathe to skip. Alan’s father explains that he and “Uncle Jay” performed as children on trombone and trumpet and Minter evokes that long-ago moment in bold silhouettes, as the present-day Dad ad-libs the performing motions in the adjoining tapestry featuring the outline of the church and the intrusion of red, the color of blood.
In a spread that adult readers may thematically compare to Caldecott Medal winners They Were Strong and Good (Robert Dawson, 1941) and Grandfather’s Journey (Allen Say, 1994) Alan, Sis and Mom eye monochrome photos of Pa and Granny. Mom tells her children they have their eyes. Alan suddenly reflects on his father’s stories and the tractor ride and is hit by a bolt of budding inspiration. Before night encroaches the family gather on metal chairs around the porch steps first to hear a brief monologue by Daddy who frames the indomitable posture of those who stand by their dreams:
Our people were stolen from Africa and shipped to this continent in chains. But no one could lock away their dreams. They dreamed on this land during slavery. They dreamed on this land as they made a way out of no way and fought Jim Crow. Seventy-five years ago, a farmer and a teacher bought this land. And look at us now.
The delivery of the song and poem leave a heartening impression in the heat and Winter’s tapestry is is suffused a kaleidoscopic color mix suggesting that all people are entitled to the freedom Americans are guaranteed to by our forefathers and our laws. The moment of truth arrives for Alan who is all too aware that all eyes are upon him. The artist shows the boy engulfed by blue in a striking canvas as he experiences an epiphany in closeup and follows up with the consummation when he triumphantly declares while holding a ball of cotton in one hand and a pecan and dirt in the other as he evokes the quilts Granny made to keep her children warm, the trees his grandfather planted that the kids loved to climb and earth for land that is ours in an assertion that echos back to Gerald O’Hara’s regard of the land in Gone with the Wind as “the only thing in the world worth working for, worth fighting for, worth dying for, because it’s the only thing that lasts”. Alas, as fireflies wink and both Grandma and Daddy acknowledge their approval Alan’s “gift” may have been closest of all to the kinship between family and the land they toil. Winter brings a phantasmagorical transcription into the moment of revelation.
Cards, checkers and late night memories are manifested in an old trunk and the morning intrudes much too soon, and the family departs with Grandpa illustrated wearing a “tree of life” dress while feeding the chickens in a surreal tapestry that seems to blend memory with experience. Concluding leitmotifs embolden the family and the earth as cosmic partners or the “immense design of things” as Willa Cather writes in her famous story “Paul’s Case.” Going Down Home with Daddy magnificently negotiates the biggest themes, which are visualized in the most rapturous and ravishing terms by the artist, a master of layered textures. It is hard to imagine that Minter won’t be square in the thick of things when the Caldecott committee deliberates on the weekend of January 24th in Philadelphia. He and Lyons have stirred the emotions with interacting prose and art of the highest caliber.
Author Kelly Starling Lyons
Artist Daniel Minter
Note: This is the thirteenth entry in the 2019 Caldecott Medal Contender series. The annual venture does not purport to predict what the committee will choose, rather it attempts to gauge what the writer feels should be in the running. In most instances the books that are featured in the series have been touted as contenders in various online round-ups at children’s book sites, but for the ones that are not, the inclusions are a humble plea to the committee for consideration. It is anticipated the series will include in the neighborhood of around 15 to 20 titles; the order which they are being presented in is arbitrary, as every book in this series is a contender. Some of my top favorites of the lot will be done near the end. The awards will be announced near the end of January, hence the reviews will continue until around the 22nd or so of that month.