School Library Journal Review
Gr 1 Up--Tar Beach is a work of modern art translated into a children's picture book, and the adaptation is so natural that it seems inevitable. From her 1988 story quilt, reproduced on the cover and within the last pages of the book, Ringgold has taken both the setting and the text. The painted scene in the center of the quilt shows a Harlem rooftop on a starry night with four adults playing cards and with Cassie Louise Lightfoot and her brother, Be Be, lying on a blanket gazing at the sky. Cassie sees herself flying over the city lights; dreams of wearing the George Washington Bridge as a necklace; imagines giving her father the union building he is not allowed to join because of his half-black, half-Indian heritage; flies over the ice cream factory; and takes her little brother with her to the sky. Cassie's story, written along the borders of the quilt in tiny script, becomes the text of the book. The illustrations painted for the book version are done in the same colorful, naive style as the quilt. This type of art translates beautifully into the storybook format, and a border of bright fabric designs on the bottom of each page duplicates the material used in the quilt. In capturing the euphoria of a child's dreams, and in its gentle reminder of the social injustices of the adult world, the book is both universal and contemporary. --Shirley Wilton, Ocean County College, Toms River, NJ (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
A girl uses her imagination to soar from the "tar beach" roof of her family's Harlem home. "Ringgold's strong figures and flattened perspective bring a distinctive magic to this dreamy and yet wonderfully concrete vision," said PW. All ages. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
The book - originally created as a story quilt - recounts the dream adventures of eight-year-old Cassie, who flies above her apartment rooftop looking down on 1939 Harlem. A stunningly beautiful book. From HORN BOOK 1991, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
A Harlem-born artist expands on one of her distinctive ""quilt paintings"" to create a marvelously evocative book that draws on her own imaginative life as a child. As explained in a concluding note, Ringgold's ""Woman on a Bridge"" series, including Tar Beach (reproduction included), is now in the Guggenheim. Combining the traditional association between flying and the escape of slaves to freedom with her own fantasies as a child who delighted in the sense of liberation and empowerment she felt on a rooftop from which she saw stars twinkling among the lights of nearby George Washington Bridge, Ringgold has fashioned a poignant fictional story about eight-year-old Cassie, who dreams that she can claim the bridge (and freedom and wealth) by soaring above the city; she can even own the Union Building that her skillful father helped to build--though he is often out of work because he is denied membership in the union. The triumphant soaring of imagination over reality is beautifully expressed in Ringgold's bold, vibrant paintings, newly rendered to tell this story, and with details from the quilt's glowing patchwork as a delightful continue along the bottom of each page. Beautiful, innovative, and full of the joy of one unconquerable soul. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Ages 4-7. Harlem artist Ringgold bases this picture book on her 1988 quilt painting Tar Beach, now in the Guggenheim Museum collection. Set in 1939, the story's first-person narrative tells of Cassie, a young girl who lies with her little brother one summer night on a mattress at Tar Beach (the rooftop of her apartment building) while the grownups play cards. Dreaming of power and freedom, she begins to soar over the George Washington Bridge and the buildings below, magically helping her family and, eventually, returning to teach her brother to fly. Social commentary is woven into the story: it seems that racial prejudice has kept Cassie's father and her grandpa out of the construction workers' union. Ringgold's urban primitive paintings, done in bold, deep tones with splashes of color, combine the architectural framework of the city with its human warmth and occasionally ethereal beauty. Along the bottom of each double-page spread runs a border of quilt squares, photographically reproduced from the original quilt, which is shown in full at the end of the book. Although the quilt itself may have more impact as a work of art, the book presents Ringgold's vision in a sequential, narrative form that is more accessible to young children. ~--Carolyn Phelan
