Review Detail

We Could Fly is based on a song created by Rhiannon Giddens and Dirk Powell. It has a folksy richness that feels like our characters are reaching back through their ancestors and feeling their long-ago yearning to leave earthly bonds behind and go to the promised land. The mother and daughter are in white and the illustrations are whimsical, while giving a sense they are dying and going to heaven. This book does not feel like modern tales, but harkens back to times of a darker past when Africans were enslaved and forced from their homelands. Yet all the language and illustrations feel soft and uplifting. This book would work best if you know the song. I also think that it is better suited to older children or even adults who know a bit of history and can appreciate the cultural context of this book's celebration of their ancestral memory to want to go back to the promised land.