The Virginia Hamilton Lifetime Achievement Award is awarded annually by the American Library Association as part of the Coretta Scott King Awards. The People Could Fly was originally released in 1985 as the title story of a set of folktales collected by Virginia Hamilton, and illustrated in black and. She received a National Book Award, a Newbury Medal, and MacArthur Fellowship, the first author of children’s books to do so. It includes stories such as that tells of slavery which put them in captivity, chaining them away from their ability to fly and thus, decreasing their power.

Hamilton wrote dozens of books for children and young adults. The folktale The People Could Fly by Virginia Hamilton tells the various folk stories of the African people. Way above the plantation, way over the slavery land. Suffering as slaves on a plantation, the people are reminded of their ability to fly and so fly away: “They went so high. With those words, Sarah remembers her ability to fly, and soon she and her. An elderly slave, Toby, helps her up and whispers the magic words to her: Kum. They were unable to take their wings with them on the slave ships to America. In Hamilton’s telling of the tale, a young slave mother, Sarah, is whipped by the overseer while she is working in the fields with her baby on her back.

A slave named Toby knows the magic words that will remind the slaves how to fly again. The People Could Fly tells the story of how some people in Africa knew magic and were able to fly with black wings. Virginia Hamilton’s folktale, The People Could Fly, tells the story of Africans who had the ability to fly, but lost that ability when they came to the United States as slaves. The People Could Fly: The Picture Book(2004) illustrates the title story from Virginia Hamilton’s collection The People Could Fly: American Black Folktales (1985).

The people could fly folktale