Langston Hughes Wrote a Children’s Book
In 1936, Langston Hughes and the artist Elmer W. Brown collaborated on a children’s book called The Sweet and Sour Animal Book. They were never able to get it published, but now, in 2023, if you happen to be in Cleveland, you can view an exhibit called ‘The Sweet and Sour Journey of Langston Hughes and Elmer W. Brown’ at the museum ARTneo.
According to this NYT piece: “The 21 poems, letters from Hughes and over 30 illustrations and watercolors on view revive a largely forgotten artistic partnership between two pioneers of what Sabine Kretzschmar, the show’s project manager, called ‘children’s literature by African Americans, for everybody.’”
Interestingly, Oxford University Press did publish a version of the book’s text in 1994 but accompanied by art from students of the Harlem School of the Arts. But now, the text and the art are together — as intended — and “Kretzschmar said she hopes the exhibition might bestow on its creators a gift they never got: a book contract… ‘I’d love it if someone would publish this in a very artful way,’ she said. ‘It should be shared with the public it deserves.’”
{You can click the images below to enlarge them.}
originally published on instagram