The Hired Hand by Robert D. San Souci, Illustrated by Jerry Pinkney

3rd grade and up

This picture book with text by the great folklorist Robert D. San Souci draws on an old African-American tale of a stranger who could restore people’s youth by cutting them into pieces, washing them, and then putting them back together under magic words. The story itself is worded in such a way that the tale could take place anywhere, anytime before the mechanization of the world. Jerry Pinkney’s illustrations lend to this atmosphere; watercolor paintings allow for colors to bleed into each other to blur the lines between magic and reality.

Pinkney used a similar technique to illustrate Julius Lester’s Tales of Uncle Remus: The Adventures of Brer Rabbit (reviewed elsewhere in this blog). The watercolor effect in the color pictures of that book give a naturalness to these tales of the animal world, while the pencil and graphite drawings help portray the old age of the tales. The dress of the animals indicates that they are really representations of human frailties and strengths; Pinkney also ties them through their apparel to the slaves whose oral traditions kept the characters alive. In both of these African-American tales, Pinkney’s style at once grounds the stories in their natural feel and lets the imagination soar in their rich, nicely saturated colors.