things in the garden are innocent of how we use them .
Your latest book , An Encyclopedia of Gardening for Colored Children , illustrated by Kara Walker , will be released May 7 . It is full of provocative illustrations and language that describes not only plants and flowers , but events in history . What is the message ? I didn ' t think of it so much as a message but as the joy of knowing something . If you ' re a child from the West Indies and your parents give you breadfruit , it ' d be wonderful to know how it got there . Native to the Pacific Islands , to Tahiti , it was brought to the West Indies to feed slaves . I ' ve never met a child who liked breadfruit , as if we instinctively know its origins . If you enjoy an orange or a rose , wouldn ’ t you want to know where it came from ? Once you start talking about cotton , sugarcane , nutmeg , about the vegetable kingdom , you are talking about history . Rubber is native to Brazil , but the Dutch took it . Tea belongs in China , but it became a commodity and changed the culture . Dahlias , whose hollow stems were used to treat urinary tract infections , are native to Mexico , and Europeans took it to Europe . Am I writing about plants , am I writing about history , or am I writing about evil ?
Do you have a favorite letter in your new book ? My favorite illustration is Nicotiana , a person lying clearly dead , with a beautiful nicotine plant coming out of her , blooming . It ' s so poignant . Nicotiana is named after a Frenchman , Jean Nicot .
What age child do you see reading An Encyclopedia ? This is just the book I would have wanted as a child . My childhood was complicated , but among the joys was being taught to read at a very early age . I would read anything in front of me . While people were playing , I would read and steal books . For my seventh birthday , my mother gave me the Concise Oxford English Dictionary . An Encyclopedia would have been heaven , a book that told you things and showed you things . So , it ’ s really written for the seven-year-old child I was . Children are
incredibly curious , and it just drives me crazy how we infantilize children ' s literature . I was reading to my granddaughter , who is only three years old , Mrs . Lincoln and Mrs . Keckly , about the friendship between a First Lady and former slave . She just loved Mrs . Keckly . ■
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May Holiday / June 2024 2023 BERKSHIRE MAGAZINE // // 109