Fifty Cents and a Dream, Jabari Asim
Fifty Cents and a Dream, Jabari Asim
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Fifty Cents and a Dream
Young Booker T. Washington

Author: Jabari Asim

Narrator: LaQuita James

Unabridged: 20 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 02/23/2021

Synopsis

Booker dreamed
of making friends with words,
setting free the secrets
that lived in books.

Born into slavery, young Booker T. Washington could only dream of learning to read and write. After emancipation, Booker began a five-hundred-mile journey, mostly on foot, to Hampton Institute, taking his first of many steps towards a college degree. When he arrived, he had just fifty cents in his pocket and a dream about to come true. The young slave who once waited outside of the schoolhouse would one day become a legendary educator of freedmen.

Award-winning artist Bryan Collier captures the hardship and the spirit of one of the most inspiring figures in American history, bringing to life Booker T. Washington's journey to learn, to read, and to realize a dream.

About Jabari Asim

Born in St. Louis, Jabari Asim is a journalist and the author of many works of fiction and nonfiction. He is currently the executive editor of the Crisis, the official magazine of the NAACP. He also contributes to the Washington Post and Bookforum, and is an associate professor of creative writing at Emerson College.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Laura on February 21, 2018

I read this aloud to my grandson. It’s a very good, well-illustrated, abbreviated biography of Booker T. Washington. We both enjoyed it.......more

Goodreads review by Ms. on June 24, 2015

Bravo! This book is amazing. This book followed the life of Booker T. Washington before founding the Tuskegee Institute. This story is one that begins with Booker T. Washington as a slave; he is watching his master’s daughter as she attends college. He is not allowed to learn how to read because of......more

Quotes

A School Library Journal 2012 Editor's Choice List
A Kirkus Best Children's Books List Selection
A Fall 2012 Parent's Choice Silver Award Winner
An NAACP Image Award Nominee
A 2013 CCBC Choices list selection

Praise for Fifty Cents and a Dream
*"Asim's lyrical text transforms the journey into a spiritual awakening for a young man who had 'a dream in his soul.' Collier is in brilliant Caldecott Honor style, using his signature watercolor paintings and cut-paper collage to incorporate elements from Booker's life and visions into each illustration...An outstanding achievement and a life worthy of note."—Kirkus (starred review)

* "Collier's patterned and textured watercolor and paper collage paintings perfectly mirror the narrative...An inspirational life, memorably presented."—School Library Journal (starred review)

* "Collier's (Dave the Potter) sophisticated design elements will have readers revisiting his extraordinary collages...Asim's (Boy of Mine) lyrical narrative is succinct yet illustrative, and, combined with the artwork, makes an impressive addition to any biography collection."—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Booker T. Washington is often attacked for compromising with, rather than attacking, the political establishment, but in this handsome picture-book biography, the focus is on an amazing achievement in his youth, when he walked 500 miles from his West Virginia home 'without a single penny in his pocket' to make it to school."
—Booklist

"Everything about the bookmaking here-from the carefully chosen typography to the look of parchment paper to the endpapers taken from Webster's American Spelling Book-reverberates with the importance of books and learning."—The Horn Book

"Remarkable...[a] triumph in picture book design...told with poetic and soulful candor."—New York Times Book Review

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