Summary: A children’s book written by James Baldwin and illustrated by his friend.
I very much appreciated the biography of James Baldwin that Nicholas Boggs recently wrote. Part of how Boggs came to write the biography was coming across the out of print Little Man, Little Man and discovering eventually that the illustrator was not dead as he had been told, but very much alive.
Over a couple years Boggs was able to get a new edition of the book into print and interview Yoran Cazac and those around him several times. It was original research on an aspect of Baldwin’s life which had largely not been explored.
Once I finished the biography, I picked up a copy of Little Man, Little Man. It was Baldwin’s only children’s book. And it was written in large part because his young nephew asked James Baldwin to write a book about him. This was a book about a young boy and his community in Harlem in the mid 1970s.
Primarily I find it interesting as a historical artifact and an example of an alternate side of Baldwin. The art is interesting, but Cazac had never been to New York, and the characters based on Baldwin’s nieces and nephews were only a handful of snapshots from Baldwin to Cazac, so it is a somewhat dreamscape of Harlem.
The story is simple and involves introducing the reader to the characters and neighborhood and the task of going to the store. This is James Baldwin. Issues of poverty and grief and police brutality are present, but they are in the setting not central features of the story. The central feature is the characters and the way they are cared for by the community.
Little Man, Little Man is not a book I would recommend that every one go out and get. But it is a book that I would try to check out from your library and read. There are a couple of introductory essays, but the main book is a children’s book that can be read in an hour or less. I am glad that I could see another aspect of Baldwin’s writing and I am glad that Boggs was able to get a new edition into the world.
Little Man, Little Man: A Story of Childhood by James Baldwin, Yoran Cazac illustrator Purchase Links: Hardcover, Kindle Edition