Description: Celebrate We Gullah Geechee invites children to discover Gullah culture. In this rhythmic book, five young narrators invite us "down South." Each narrator focuses on one of the five senses, celebrating the Gullah Geechee Heritage Corridor of coastal North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida.
Brief description:
Yvette R. Murray is an award-winning poet and author of the picture book Celebrate We Gullah Geechee (Free Spirit Publishing) and the poetry collection Hush, Puppy (Finishing Line Press). She has been published in Chestnut Review, Emrys Journal, Litmosphere, A Gathering Together, and others. She is the 2022 Susan Laughter Meyers Poetry Fellow, a 2021 Best New Poet selection, a Watering Hole Fellow, and a Pushcart Prize nominee. She is also a member of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. Yvette lives in Charleston, South Carolina.
Review Quotes:
"In Celebrate We Gullah Geechee, author Yvette R. Murray deftly weaves the sights, sounds, and sayings of the people who reside along the Gullah Geechee Corridor. Her ability to voice the beauty and uniqueness of place and people based on her own lived experience as a member of this vibrant strand of the African Diaspora brings an unparalleled intensity that sings throughout the book. Nestled in a vibrant landscape illustrated by Tonya Engel, the words, food, smells, and deep familiarity with nature come alive as children chant, from page to page, their love of the environment that has cloistered and nurtured, a land that sows Africa into the soil to preserve its seed. Murray's book is a reaching out and a pulling in, indeed, it is an invitation to celebrate the wonder of Gullah Geechee through the eyes of the purest observers among us--the children!"
--Regina YC Garcia, author of Whispers from the Multiverse and The Firetalker's Daughter