“There was a party for Langston at the library … to celebrate the man who wrote wake-up stories, and rise-and-shine rhymes …” The 1991 celebration of the opening of the Langston Hughes Auditorium at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture inspired this dynamic introduction/tribute to Hughes, along with poets Maya Angelou and Amiri Baraka. It was a photograph of Angelou and Baraka at the celebration that first made author Jason Reynolds wonder what event had brought these two “word makers” together—on a dance floor! The narrative offers artful, observant, inviting entry points into all three poets’ work. Hughes could “make the word HARLEM sound like the perfect place to have a party.” Angelou could “make the word WOMAN seem like the word MOUNTAIN.” Baraka could “make the word Black echo into the future and way back into the past …” The Pumphreys’ distinctive illustrations, created using handmade stamps, are a perfect pairing for the energy of the text and pay tribute to other Black writers on the opening endpapers. (Ages 5-9)

A Caldecott Honor Book
A Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor Book

New York Times bestselling and award-winning author Jason Reynolds’s debut picture book is a snappy, joyous ode to Word King, literary genius, and glass-ceiling smasher Langston Hughes and the luminaries he inspired.

Back in the day, there was a heckuva party, a jam, for a word-making man. The King of Letters. Langston Hughes. His ABCs became drums, bumping jumping thumping like a heart the size of the whole country. They sent some people yelling and others, his word-children, to write their own glory.

Maya Angelou, Amiri Baraka, and more came be-bopping to recite poems at their hero’s feet at that heckuva party at the Schomberg Library, dancing boom da boom, stepping and stomping, all in praise and love for Langston, world-mending word man. Oh, yeah, there was hoopla in Harlem, for its Renaissance man. A party for Langston.