The author of ten novels for young readers, Mildred D. Taylor shares pride in her racial heritage and provides historical fiction about life for black Americans in her award-winning series of novels about the fictional Logan family. Such novels do not...

Mildred Taylor rose to prominence as an author of children's books in the mid 1970s. With the publication of her novel Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (1976) and its subsequent winning of the Newbery Medal, Taylor achieved recognition as a writer able to...

First are the trees behind the house…. [They] are the joy of young Cassie's life—trunks to hug, leaves that sing, branches that protect. With such a forest, a girl can feel rich even though this is the Depression and money is scarce, particularly in Mississippi for black people. Cassie's father has to go clear to Louisiana to find work, and sometimes when he sends money home it is taken from the envelope before the family gets it. Still, no matter what happens, the trees sing the...

Song of the Trees is so beautifully told, the prose rings poetry…. The children are charming, disarming, personal, and not too private in their love and appreciation for the "sharp-needled pines," the "shaggy-bark hickories," and the "sweet alligator gum trees" which tower helplessly on "Big Ma's" land. They forebodingly await their devastation with their song quieted in an implied anticipation of their destruction.

The dedication of [Song of the Trees]—thirteen lines which end "To my grandparents … who bridged the generations between slavery and freedom; and To the Family, who fought and survived"—immediately sets the tone of black pride that permeates every page…. [The] book is almost written to formula: Blacks encounter evil whites who attempt to rob them of their possessions and dignity, but a strong, black man counteracts with force. But what could have been a banal, trite...