Bookverdict.com

Gr 3–5—This picture-book biography relates events in the life of an artist who started drawing at the age of 85. As a young boy, Traylor picked cotton. His enslaved family survived the aftermath of the Civil War and he worked a farm, all the while recording memories of his family around him, the animals and their antics, and the gatherings within his community. He bravely left his farm at the age of 81 and tried to find work in Montgomery. At the nadir of...Log In or Sign Up to Read More

Bill Traylor was born into slavery in 1854 and spent his first eighty years on the same Alabama plantation, working as a sharecropper after Emancipation. Late in life, in 1935, Traylor moved to Montgomery, where he tried to eke out a living selling pencils on the street. For some reason he himself could never explain beyond "It jes’ happened," at the age of eighty-five he began to draw on scraps of cardboard as he sat on a wooden crate on a downtown street. He drew s...Log In or Sign Up to Read More

This picture-book biography describes artist Traylor's life--born into slavery in 1854, he worked as a sharecropper after Emanci...Log In or Sign Up to Read More