A James Baldwin Book, Forgotten and Overlooked for Four Decades, Gets Another Life / Alexandra Alter. In: The New York Times Aug. 20, 2018

“I never had a childhood,” the writer James Baldwin once said. “I was born dead.”

Baldwin delivered this bleak assessment of his youth when he was around 50, and in the middle of writing “Little Man, Little Man,” his only children’s book.

The story unfolds from the perspective of a curious, irrepressible 4-year-old boy named TJ, who loves music and playing ball, and navigates a neighborhood where gun violence, police brutality, alcoholism and drug addiction are looming threats — an outside world that even his warm home life with loving parents can’t shield him from.

A 1978 photo of Baldwin and his nephew, Tejan, who was the inspiration for TJ in “Little Man, Little Man.”CreditBaldwin Family Photo

When “Little Man, Little Man” was first published in 1976, critics didn’t know what to make of an experimental, enigmatic picture book that straddled the line between children’s and adult literature. It received lukewarm reviews and quickly went out of print.

Now, roughly four decades later, Baldwin’s relatives have resurrected the work, with a new edition from Duke University Press, and it could scarcely be more timely. It’s arriving at a moment when children’s book authors and publishers are more frequently placing black and brown children at the center of narratives about everyday life, often taking on charged social issues like mass shootings, addiction and police violence against African-American youth. They are finding an avid audience among young readers growing up in an increasingly diverse nation.

Some Baldwin fans and scholars hope that with the new edition, “Little Man, Little Man” will rightfully assume its place in the canon of African-American children’s literature, alongside works by Langston Hughes, Julius Lester, Walter Dean Myers and John Steptoe.

An illustration from “Little Man, Little Man.”CreditYoran Cazac (Beatrice Cazac)

“When it came out, people weren’t ready for it, and now people are,” said Aisha Karefa-Smart, Baldwin’s niece, who wrote an afterword for the new edition. “My uncle’s voice, his ability to speak to the challenges that many of us face in America with regard to race, has come back into the national consciousness.” ... [mehr] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/20/books/review/james-baldwin-little-man-picture-book.html