Ant or the grasshopper?, The
by Toni Morrison & Slade Morrison ; illustrated by Pascal Lemaitre
Author: Morrison, Toni
A version of Aesop's Fables finds two friends, a grasshopper and an ant, who
each spend their time differently preparing for winter in a tale of friendship,
betrayal, and survival.
New York: Scribner, 2003, 40 p.
Other Contributors:
Morrison, Slade: joint author; Lemaitre, Pascal: illustrator
ISBNs Associated with this Title:
0743222474
Credits:
• Novelist/EBSCO Publishing
• Baker & Taylor
• Added to NoveList: 20031120
• TID: 120986
Beloved: a novel
Author: Morrison, Toni
After the Civil War ends, Sethe longingly recalls the two-year-old daughter
whom she killed when threatened with recapture after escaping from slavery 18
years before.
New York: A. A. Knopf; distributed by Random House, 1987, 275 p.
Booklist Review: Morrison encapsulates the horror of slavery and the consuming passion of motherhood in a single act of defiance by a runaway slave. The pivotal event occurs when Sethe, the slave, murders her infant daughter rather than permit her recapture. The story of Sethe's violation, her determined escape, and its horrific consequences is slowly played out in memory and gossip, as Morrison hints at the terrible secret in the woman's past--a legacy so dreadful that she has alienated the black community, driven off her two sons, and sent her remaining daughter into her own form of exile. Sethe is haunted not only by her own memories and her neighbors' reactions, but also by the ghostly presence of the murdered girl, who is called simply Beloved and who appears just as her mother, released from prison, seems ready to embark on a normal, loving relationship with a man. Sethe's history, too awful to be narrated in a straightforward, chronological manner, is related in kaleidoscopic fashion, complete with the shatteringly eloquent and accurate dialogue that Morrison has displayed in her earlier fiction, such as Song of Solomon (Booklist 73:1704 Jl 15 74). DPD. [OCLC] 86-46157 --
Publishers Weekly Review: Mixed with the lyric beauty of the writing, the fury in Morrison's (Song of Solomonp latest book is almost palpable. Set in rural Ohio several years after the Civil War, this haunting chronicle of slavery and its aftermath traces the life of a young woman, Sethe, who has kept a terrible memory at bay only by shutting down part of her mind. Juxtaposed with searing descriptions of brutality, gradually revealed in flashbacks, are equally harrowing scenes in which fantasy takes flesh, a device Morrison handles with consummate skill. The narrative concerns Sethe's former life as a slave on Sweet Home Farm, her escape with her children to what seems a safe haven and the tragic events that ensue. The death of Sethe's infant daughter Beloved is the incident on which the plot hinges, and it is obvious to the reader that the sensuous young woman who mysteriously appears one day is Beloved's spirit, come back to claim Sethe's love. Sethe's surviving daughter, Denver, immediately grasps the significance of Beloved's return and so does Paul Dno period after D, another escapee from Sweet Home; but Sethe herself resists comprehension, and, as a result, a certain loss of tension affects the latter part of the narrative. But this is a small flaw in a novel full of insights, both piercing and tender, with distinctive, memorable characters, flowing prose that conveys speech patterns with musical intensity and a brilliantly conceived story. As a record of white brutality mitigated by rare acts of decency and compassion, and as a testament to the courageous lives of a tormented people, this novel is a milestone in the chronicling of the black experience in America. It is Morrison writing at the height of her considerable powers, and it should not be missed. BOMC main selection. (September 16)
Library Journal Review: Powerful is too tame a word to describe Toni Morrison's searing new novel of post-Civil War Ohio. Morrison, whose myth-laden storytelling shone in Song of Solomon and other novels, has created an unforgettable world in this novel about ex-slaves haunted by violent memories. Before the war, Sethe, pregnant, sent her children away to their grandmother in Ohio, whose freedom had been paid for by their father. Sethe runs too, but when her ``owners'' come to recapture her, she attempts to murder the children, succeeding with one, named Beloved. This murder will (literally) haunt Sethe for the rest of her life and affect everyone around her. A fascinating, grim, relentless story, this important book by a major writer belongs in most libraries. Ann H. Fisher, Radford P.L., Va.
Kirkus Reviews /* Starred Review */ Morrison's truly majestic fifth novel--strong
and intricate in craft; devastating in impact. Set in post-Civil War Ohio, this
is the story of how former slaves, psychically crippled by years of outrage
to their bodies and their humanity, attempt to "beat hack the past,"
while the ghosts and wounds of that past ravage the present. The Ohio house
where Sethe and her second daughter, ten-year-old Denver, live in 1873 is "spiteful.
Full of a [dead] baby's venom." Sethe's mother-in-law, a good woman who
preached freedom to slave minds, has died grieving. It was she who nursed Sethe,
the runaway--near death with a newborn--and gave her a brief spell of contentment
when Sethe was reunited with her two boys and first baby daughter. But the boys
have by now run off, scared, and the murdered first daughter "has palsied
the house" with rage. Then to the possessed house comes Paul D., one of
the "Pauls" who, along with Sethe, had been a slave on the "Sweet
Home" plantation under two owners--one "enlightened," one vicious.
(But was there much difference between them?) Sethe will honor Paul D.'s humiliated
manhood; Paul D. will banish Sethe's ghost, and hear her stories from the past.
But the one story she does not tell him will later drive him away--as it drove
away her boys, and as it drove away the neighbors. Before he leaves, Paul D.
will be baffled and anxious about Sethe's devotion to the strange, scattered
and beautiful lost girl, "Beloved." Then, isolated and alone together
for years, the three women will cling to one another as mother, daughter, and
sister--found at last and redeemed. Finally, the ex-slave community, rebuilding
on ashes, will intervene, and Beloved's tortured vision of a mother's love--refracted
through a short nightmare life--will end with her death. Morrison traces the
shifting shapes of suffering and mythic accommodations, through the shell of
psychosis to the core of a victim's dark violence, with a lyrical insistence
and a clear sense of the time when a beleaguered peoples' "only grace.
. .was the grace they could imagine.
(Kirkus Reviews, August 15, 1987)
Features about this author or title:
1. Author Read-Alike - Toni Morrison
2. Book Discussion Guide - Beloved
Other related features:
1. Annotated Book List - The Roots of Modern African American Fiction
2. Author Read-Alike - Toni Morrison
3. Awards (Best Fiction) - Adult -> Best Fiction -> Literary -> Pulitzer
Prize for Fiction
4. Awards (Best Fiction) - Young Adult -> Best Fiction -> Literary ->
YALSA Outstanding Books for the College Bound -> 1999
5. Book Discussion Guide - Caucasia
6. Book Discussion Guide - Fair and Tender Ladies
7. Book Discussion Guide - Loverboy
8. Book Discussion Guide - Mama Day
9. Book Discussion Guide - My Jim
10. Book Discussion Guide - Paradise
11. Book Discussion Guide - Song of Solomon
12. Book Discussion Guide - The God of Small Things
13. Book Discussion Guide - The Known World
14. Book Discussion Guide - The Sound and the Fury
Author Web Sites:
1. Books and Writers-Toni Morrison : Features a biography of the author.
2. About Toni Morrison : A short biography of the author on the Nobel Prize
web site.
ISBNs Associated with this Title:
0394535979
0452280621 : Paperback
0452264464 : Paperback
1400033411 : Paperback
037540273X : Hardcover
0140283404 : Paperback
0451156595 : Paperback - Mass Market
0375404872 : Cassette - Audio
0452154553 : Paperback
0375404325 : Cassette - Audio
0375704140 : Paperback - Large Print
0307264882 : Hardcover
0606040463 : DEMCO Turtleback
8440635893 : Paperback - Foreign Language
0375405623 : Hardcover
0833522019 : Glued Binding
0679434364 : Hardcover
0452156408 : Paperback
0896211231 : Hardcover - Large Print
0739342274 : CD - Audio
Credits:
• Hennepin County Public Library
• Baker & Taylor
• American Historical Fiction: An Annotated Guide to Novels for Adults
and Young Adults, published by Oryx Press
• MetaMetrics, Inc.
• Booklist, published by the American Library Association
• Publishers Weekly, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Library Journal, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Copyright 2005, VNU Business Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved
• Novelist/EBSCO Publishing
• Added to NoveList: 20010101
• TID: 046250
Big box, The
By Toni Morrison with Slade Morrison. Illustrated by Giselle Potter
Author: Morrison, Toni
Because they do not abide by the rules written by the adults around them, three
children are judged unable to handle their freedom and forced to live in a box
with three locks on the door.
New York: Jump at the Sun/Hyperion Books for Children, copyright 1999, unpaged.
School Library Journal Review: Gr 3-6-Morrison sets to rhyme a story her son created when he was nine-years-old. When three children make their parents, neighbors, or teachers nervous-Patty talks in the library, Mickey plays handball where he shouldn't, and Liza Sue lets the chickens on her farm keep their eggs-the adults decide that the youngsters can't handle their freedom and so choose to have them confined. A literal reading of the text says that they put them in a big box, but some will infer that they were institutionalized. Their parents visit on Wednesday nights and provide plenty of material gifts, but "the door only opens one way." Potter's moody, quirky, somber-colored illustrations, similar to those she created for Candace Fleming's Gabriella's Song (Atheneum, 1997), interpret the story quite literally, picturing nearly every object mentioned in the text, leaving little to readers' imaginations. The box varies between a furnished room with the three locks on the door referred to in the text, to the cardboard box on the cover, from which, at the end of the story, the three break free to recapture their personal freedom. This is a book that will have a hard time finding an audience: it looks like a picture book for younger children, yet the theme and images require some sophistication and a desire to explore life's boundaries. What children of any age will make of parents who decided to lock up their own children for relatively minor infractions remains to be seen.-Ellen Fader, Multnomah County Library, Portland, OR Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.
Publishers Weekly Review: Nobel laureate Morrison's debut book for children unfortunately shows little of the childlike perspective that so masterfully informs The Bluest Eye. This enigmatic tale, written in verse, is inspired by a story made up by Morrison's then nine-year-old son. The opening scene depicts two girls and a boy who live in a "big brown box" with a door that has "three big locks." The trio have been sent there by adults who think they "can't handle their freedom." Suburban Patty has "too much fun in school all day" ("When we pledged to the flag, she'd spoil it"); urban Mickey writes his name on mailbox lids and plays handball next to a sign that forbids the game; and country girl Liza Sue lets the chickens keep their eggs and feeds honey to the bees. Each child, when told that he or she has overstepped the bounds, counters with the identical unchildlike response: "I know you are smart and I know that you think/ You're doing what is best for me./ But if freedom is handled just your way/ Then it's not my freedom or free." The parents, never visible visiting the box, nonetheless leave behind plenty of parting gifts (e.g., "Blimpies and Frisbees... and Matchbox cars that go"). In the final scene, the children, inexplicably, easily clamber over the sides of the big brown box to freedom. Potter's (Gabriella's Song) handsome illustrations in a postmodern folk-art style possess an austere simplicity, effectively marking the contrast to the adults' commercial bribes littering the floor. But ultimately the tale is mundane; the social commentary on childhood, freedom and the tendency of parents to give children things instead of time and attention seems aimed more at adult readers than children. Ages 8-up. (Sept.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews Morrison and her son have created a rhymed parable--clearly
addressing adults--about three children who are firmly, lovingly locked into
a room-sized box because they "can't handle their freedom." Patty,
Mickey, and Liza Sue don't follow all the rules, e.g., at school, Patty "ran
through the halls and wouldn't play with dolls/And when we pledged to the flag
she'd spoil it." Their teachers, parents, and neighbors nervously put them
away, not listening to their repeated protestation: " 'I know that you
think/You're doing what is best for me./But if freedom is handled just your
way/Then it's not my freedom or free.' " Potter places sad children and
grave adults into fresh compositions, done in restrained colors, scattered with
the small animals and items mentioned in the text. The Morrisons end with a
challenge--"Who says they can't handle their freedom?"--that is weakened
by an illustration that, in showing the children effortlessly pushing down the
box's walls, misses the point. Nonetheless, it's a valid message, strongly made,
and a promising children's book debut for the authors.
(Kirkus Reviews, July 15, 1999)
Features about this author or title:
1. Author Read-Alike - Toni Morrison
Other related features:
1. Annotated Book List - African-American Children's Authors
Author Web Sites:
1. Books and Writers-Toni Morrison : Features a biography of the author.
2. About Toni Morrison : A short biography of the author on the Nobel Prize
web site.
Other Contributors:
Morrison, Slade; Potter, Giselle
ISBNs Associated with this Title:
0786804165
078682364X
0786812915 : Paperback - Juvenile
0606260684 : DEMCO Turtleback - Juvenile
0613910141 : Prebind
Credits:
• Hennepin County Public Library
• Baker & Taylor
• Booklist, published by the American Library Association
• School Library Journal, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Publishers Weekly, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Copyright 2005, VNU Business Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved
• Added to NoveList: 20010101
• TID: 095843
New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, [1970], 164 p.
Kirkus Reviews This soil," concludes the young narrator of this quiet
chronicle of garrotted innocence, "is bad for all kinds of flowers. Certain
seeds it will not nurture, certain fruit it will not bear." And among the
exclusions of white rural Ohio, echoed by black respectability, is ugly, black,
loveless, twelve-year-old Pecora. But in a world where blue-eyed gifts are clucked
over and admired, and the Pecoras are simply not seen, there is always the possibility
of the dream and wish--for blue eyes. Born of a mother who adjusted her life
to the clarity and serenity of white households and "acquired virtues that
were easy to maintain" and a father, Cholly, stunted by early rejections
and humiliations, Pecora just might have been loved--for in raping his daughter
Cholly did at least touch her. But "Love is never better than the lover,"
and with the death of her baby, the child herself, accepting absolutely the
gift of blue eyes from a faith healer (whose perverse interest in little girls
does not preclude understanding), inches over into madness. A skillful understated
tribute to the fall of a sparrow for whose small tragedy there was no watching
eye.
(Kirkus Reviews, October 1, 1970)
Features about this author or title:
1. Author Read-Alike - Toni Morrison
Other related features:
1. Annotated Book List - Twelve Great Books for Reading Men
2. Author Read-Alike - Toni Morrison
3. Awards (Best Fiction) - Adult -> Best Fiction -> Literary -> Oprah's
Book Club
4. Book Discussion Guide - Beloved
5. Book Discussion Guide - Paradise
6. Book Discussion Guide - Song of Solomon
7. Book Discussion Guide - Wolf Whistle
Author Web Sites:
1. Books and Writers-Toni Morrison : Features a biography of the author.
2. About Toni Morrison : A short biography of the author on the Nobel Prize
web site.
ISBNs Associated with this Title:
0030850746
0375411550 : Hardcover
0452282195 : Paperback
0452273056 : Paperback
0451183673 : Paperback - Mass Market
0375416536 : CD - Audio
0452287065 : Paperback
0606069402 : DEMCO Turtleback
0375416528 : Cassette - Audio
0783888155 : Hardcover
0808562827 : Glued Binding
0679434364 : Hardcover
0812410971 : Glued Binding
0788743546 : Cassette - Audio
0307278441 : Paperback
0754040429 : Hardcover - Large Print
0754040437 : Hardcover - Large Print
1417664665 : Glued Binding
0739343734 : CD - Audio
0671742922 : Paperback - Mass Market
Credits:
• Hennepin County Public Library
• Novelist/EBSCO Publishing
• Baker & Taylor
• MetaMetrics, Inc.
• Library Journal, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Copyright 2005, VNU Business Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved
• Added to NoveList: 20010101
• TID: 046251
Book of mean people, The
Author: Morrison, Toni
Rabbit tells all about the "mean people" in his life including his
parents, grandparents, teachers, and brother.
Other Contributors: Lemaitre, Pascal: ill; Morrison, Slade
New York: Hyperion, 2002, 48 p.
School Library Journal Review: PreS-Gr 1–Accompanied by whimsical pen-and-ink cartoon illustrations in the style of William Steig or Shel Silverstein, this book catalogs "mean people" from a child's point of view: "Some mean people are big. Some little people are mean.… My mother is mean. She says I don't listen. She says, 'DO YOU HEAR ME?'" The illustrations feature a little bunny with big ears and a worried expression as she reacts to various unkind people in her family, before deciding to smile anyway and go play. The bunny's definition of "mean" includes a baby in diapers pulling the narrator's ears, her grandmother telling her to sit down, and her mother trying to get her to eat her peas–not instances of deliberate or intentional meanness. The book could be used as a springboard to discuss anger and shouting, etc., but it does not give any reassurance that any of these people are ever caring and loving.–Judith Constantinides, formerly at East Baton Rouge Parish Main Library, LA (Reviewed November 1, 2002) (School Library Journal, vol 48, issue 11, p132)
Publishers Weekly Review: "This is a book about mean people," opens
the mother-son team's second collaboration (after The Big Box). The narrative
begins as a series of statements about cruelty, but Lema?tre (Emily the Giraffe)
cleverly fashions the declaratives as thoughts belonging to an intelligent bunny
narrator with a diminutive canine sidekick. For "Some mean people are big.
Some little people are mean," a spread shows a huge bunny towering above
the overalls-clad hero; in the next, a diapered bunny ties the narrator's long
ears in knots. The book soon turns from general truisms about "mean"
people into a lament about the incomprehensible demands of grown-ups. Lema?tre,
however, never ceases to see the humor in the situation. "My grandmother
tells me to sit down. My grandfather tells me to sit up," appears on a
spread depicting the bunny, one ear down, one ear up, looking torn between the
two. The next spread ("How can I sit down and sit up at the same time?")
portrays the bunny lying wide-eyed, tipped backwards in his chair, while his
dog hides behind a table leg. Others scenarios are chilling, as when the bunny's
mother screams ("Do you hear me?"), blasting the hero and his puppy
clear across the room. "Frowning people scare me when they smile,"
the rabbit says at the end, surrounded by his family, all grinning evilly; but
he has the last word: "I will smile anyway! How about that!" This
bittersweet volume takes meanness in stride and advocates kindness as the antidote.
Ages 4-8. (Sept.)
? Staff (Reviewed September 9, 2002) (Publishers Weekly, vol 249, issue 36,
p68)
Kirkus Reviews A fretful child catalogs affronts: people who shout at you,
or those who whisper and giggle just out of earshot; parents who try to make
you eat something nasty-looking; the teacher who tells you that your work is
sloppy, and so on. The Morrisons (Big Box, 1999, illustrated by Giselle Potter)
address meanies as well as their victims, repeatedly asserting that screamers
disappear behind their yells, and noting that "big people are little when
they are mean. But little people are not big when they are mean." Le Maître
complements this simply phrased plaint with long-eared, Matt Groening–style
rabbits suspended in cream-colored space with a minimum of surrounding detail.
Children who know just what the young narrator is talking about may take to
heart the closing advice to smile in the face of frowns. Frowners resistant
to this pointed, child's-eye view may benefit from a dose of Betsy Everitt's
Mean Soup (1992) or the mood-changing brew concocted out of a bad day by Linda
Smith's Mrs. Biddlebox (p. 1144). (Picture book. 6-9)
(Kirkus Reviews, September 1, 2002)
Features about this author or title:
1. Author Read-Alike - Toni Morrison
Author Web Sites:
1. Books and Writers-Toni Morrison : Features a biography of the author.
2. About Toni Morrison : A short biography of the author on the Nobel Prize
web site.
ISBNs Associated with this Title:
0786805404
0786824719 : Hardcover - Juvenile
Credits:
• Novelist/EBSCO Publishing
• Baker & Taylor
• Booklist, published by the American Library Association
• School Library Journal, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Publishers Weekly, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Copyright 2005, VNU Business Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved
• Added to NoveList: 20021220
• TID: 118418
Jazz
Author: Morrison, Toni
In Harlem, 1926, Joe Trace, a door-to-door salesman in his fifties, kills his
teenage lover. A profound love story which depicts the sights and sounds of
Black urban life during the Jazz Age.
New York: A. A. Knopf, 1992, 229 p.
Publishers Weekly Review: Morrison's authoritative novel--a BOMC main selection and a 17-week PW bestseller in cloth--tells the story of three intersecting tragic lives, and adroitly uses the motif of jazz to make palpable the feel and excitement of Harlem in the 1920s. (Apr.)
Library Journal Review: What could successfully follow Morrison's Pulitzer Prize-winning and best-selling work Beloved ( LJ 9/1/87)? How about Jazz , a lyrical and haunting novel that opens tragically after Joe Trace, a salesman of women's beauty products, has shot his teenage lover Dorcas and his wife Violet has attempted to mutilate the young women's corpse during the funeral? The vision of Morrison's nameless narrator frames this love story, and this anonymous voice slowly draws readers into the rhythm of the city, specifically Harlem, where jazz casts bewitching spells on people's psyches. (Some would call its influence evil.) Readers who have been waiting for Beloved 's successor will not be disappointed. Morrison has demonstrated again why she is unequivocally one of the finest contemporary writers in America. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 12/91.-- Faye A. Chadwell, Univ. of South Carolina Lib., Columbia
Kirkus Reviews /* Starred Review */ Morrison, in her sixth novel, enters 1926
Harlem, a new black world then ("safe from fays [whites] and the things
they think up"), and moves into a love story--with a love that could clear
a space from the past, give a life or take one. At 50, Joe Trace--good-looking,
faithful to wife Violet, also from Virginia poortimes--suddenly tripped into
a passionate affair with Dorcas, 18: "one of those deep-down spooky loves
that made him so sad and happy he shot her just to keep the feeling going."
Then Violet went to Dorcas's funeral and cut her dead face. But before Joe met
Dorcas, and before her death and before Violet, in her torn coat, scoured the
neighborhood looking for reasons, looking for her own truer identity, images
of the past burned within all three: Violet's mother, tipped out of her chair
by the men who took everything away, and her death in a well; for Joe, the hand
of the "wild" woman, his mother, that never really found his. And
all of the child Dorcas's dolls burned up with her mother and her childhood.
Truly, the new music of Harlem--from clicks and taps of pleasure to the thud
of betrayed marching black veterans with their frozen faces--"had a complicated
anger in it." Were Joe and Violet substitutes for each other, for a need
known and unmet? At the close, a new link is forged between them with another
Dorcas. One of Morrison's richest novels yet, with its weave of city voices,
tough and tender, public and private, and a flight of images that sweep up the
world in a heartbeat: the narrator (never identified) contemplates airships
in a city sky as they "swim below cloud foam...like watching a private
dream....That was what [Dorcas's] hunger was like: mesmerizing, directed, floating
like a public secret." In all, a lovely novel--lyrical, searching, and
touching.
(Kirkus Reviews, March 15, 1992)
Features about this author or title:
1. Author Read-Alike - Toni Morrison
Other related features:
1. Awards (Best Fiction) - Adult -> Best Fiction -> Literary -> ALA
Notable Books -> 1993
2. Book Discussion Guide - Beloved
3. Book Discussion Guide - Fall on Your Knees
4. Book Discussion Guide - Light in August
5. Book Discussion Guide - Paradise
6. Book Discussion Guide - Song of Solomon
Author Web Sites:
1. Books and Writers-Toni Morrison : Features a biography of the author.
2. About Toni Morrison : A short biography of the author on the Nobel Prize
web site.
ISBNs Associated with this Title:
0679411674
0452269652 : Paperback
0452154553 : Paperback
1400076218 : Paperback
8440656963 : Paperback - Foreign Language
0451177800 : Paperback - Mass Market
0679411933 : Cassette - Audio
051713764X : Paperback - Budget Books
0517112558 : Paperback - Budget Books
0679434364 : Hardcover
0785719857 : Glued Binding
156956549X : Paperback
0452155622 : Hardcover
0606191968 : DEMCO Turtleback
0816156247 : Hardcover - Large Print
Credits:
• Hennepin County Public Library
• Novelist/EBSCO Publishing
• Baker & Taylor
• MetaMetrics, Inc.
• Booklist, published by the American Library Association
• Publishers Weekly, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Library Journal, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Copyright 2005, VNU Business Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved
• Added to NoveList: 20010101
• TID: 046252
Lion or the mouse?, The
by Toni and Slade Morrison ; illustrated by Pascal Lemaitre
Author: Morrison, Toni
A version of Aesop's Fables finds a lion with a thorn in his paw and the mouse
who can help him.
New York: Scribner, 2003, 40 p.
Other Contributors:
Morrison, Slade: joint author; Lemaitre, Pascal: illustrator
ISBNs Associated with this Title:
0743222482
Credits:
• Novelist/EBSCO Publishing
• Baker & Taylor
• Added to NoveList: 20031120
• TID: 121002
Love
Toni Morrison
Author: Morrison, Toni
The epitome of a group of women's ideals about love, fatherhood, and friendship,
wealthy hotel owner Bill Cosey finds his life compromised by his troubled past
and his feelings about a spellbinding woman named Celestial.
New York: Knopf, 2003, 208 p.
Publishers Weekly Review: /* Starred Review */ At the center of this haunting,
slender eighth novel by Nobel winner Morrison is the late Bill Cosey—entrepreneur,
patriarch, revered owner of the glorious Cosey Hotel and Resort (once "the
best and best-known vacation spot for colored folk on the East Coast")
and captivating ladies' man. When the novel opens, the resort has long been
closed, and Cosey's mansion shelters only two feuding women, his widow, Heed,
and his granddaughter, Christine. Then sly Junior Viviane, fresh out of "Reform,
then Prison," answers the ad Heed placed for a companion and secretary,
and sets the novel's present action—which is secondary to the rich past—in
motion. "Rigid vipers," Vida Gibbons calls the Cosey women; formerly
employed at the Cosey resort, Vida remembers only its grandeur and the benevolence
of its owner, though her husband, Sandler, knew the darker side of Vida's idol.
As Heed and Christine feud ("Like friendship, hatred needed more than physical
intimacy: it wanted creativity and hard work to sustain itself"), Junior
of the "sci-fi eyes" vigorously seduces Vida and Sandler's teenage
grandson. In lyrical flashbacks, Morrison slowly, teasingly reveals the glories
and horrors of the past—Cosey's suspicious death, the provenance of his
money, the vicious fight over his coffin, his disputed will. Even more carefully,
she unveils the women in Cosey's life: his daughter-in-law, May, whose fear
that civil rights would destroy everything they had worked for drove her to
kleptomania and insanity; May's daughter, Christine, who spent hard years away
from the paradise of the hotel; impoverished Heed the Night Johnson, who became
Cosey's very young "wifelet"; the mysterious "sporting woman"
Celestial; and L, the wise and quiet former hotel chef, whose first-person narration
weaves throughout the novel, summarizing and appraising lives and hearts. Morrison
has crafted a gorgeous, stately novel whose mysteries are gradually unearthed,
while Cosey, its axis, a man "ripped, like the rest of us, by wrath and
love," remains deliberately in shadow, even as his family burns brightly,
terribly around him. (Oct. 28)
— Staff (Reviewed September 1, 2003) (Publishers Weekly, vol 250, issue
35, p60)
Library Journal Review: When gorgeous and amoral Junior arrives in the Southern coastal town of Silk, chance brings her to a deadly crossroads. She talks herself into a job at the center of a love/hate feud between two elderly women, the remaining members of a clan who once defined Silk's African American elite. The tension involves the late Bill "Papa" Cosey and the riches he achieved during his heyday in the 1940s and 1950s as proprietor of a fabulous resort. Along the way, he obtained the intense love of many women, including granddaughter Christine, lower-class child bride Heed, and spectacular "sporting woman" Celestial. Eight compact chapters named for aspects of Cosey's character ("Benefactor," "Lover," "Guardian," and so on) present the shifting perspectives of those entranced by this charismatic, secretive man long after his death. Nobel Laureate Morrison's latest is a vividly narrated exploration of the pleasures, burdens, and distortions of obsessive devotion. Given the book's brevity, the dialog must carry the story convincingly—and, of course, Morrison is a master at this. Certainly, this book won't disappoint readers already familiar with Morrison and will serve as a good introduction for those new to her. Highly recommended. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/1/03.]—Starr E. Smith, Fairfax Cty. P.L., VA (Reviewed October 15, 2003) (Library Journal, vol 128, issue 17, p99)
Kirkus Reviews /* Starred Review */ A black patriarch's obsessive domination of the many women in his life is relentlessly scrutinized in the 1993 Nobel winner's intricately patterned eighth novel.
An opening monologue spoken by an unidentified elderly woman reminisces about the once-vibrant, now-defunct Florida Hotel and Resort (a "playground" for affluent black people) owned by the late Bill Cosey: a rags-to-riches millionaire revered for his benevolence and his ability to attract and possess beautiful women. We're soon introduced to Junior Viviane, a runaway and reform-school veteran who answers an ad for a "Companion, Secretary" placed by Cosey's (much younger) widow Heed (born, wretchedly poor, as Heed the Night Johnson). Then, in a gorgeous deployment of enigmatic flashbacks, Morrison focuses in turn on elderly May Cosey, the widow of Cosey's son Billy Boy; May's daughter Christine, the old man's only surviving blood relative, who had fled the Resort and forfeited her birthright; and the silent, judging presence who has observed them all: Cosey's legendary chef, known only as L. As Junior expertly seduces Romen, the adolescent grandson of Sandler and Vida Gibbons (both of whom had been employed by Cosey), Christine's rage, May's paranoid fear of racial unrest as a threat to her security ("for years, she hoarded and buried, and preserved and stole"), and the frail heed's stranglehold on the Cosey property and history, all meld, as the novel's climactic events deepen the enigma of Cosey (who's present only in retrospect): a fructifying paternal figure, and perhaps also an unconscionable predator (or, as L. wryly concludes, "an ordinary man ripped, like the rest of us, by wrath and love"). Incorporating elements from earlier Morrison novels (notably Jazz, Paradise, and Sula), Love is an elegantly shaped epic of infatuation, enslavement, and liberation: a rich symbolic mystery that grows steadily more eloquent and disturbing as its meanings clarify and grip the reader.
One of Morrison's finest, and a heartening return to Nobel–worthy form.
(Kirkus Reviews, August 1, 2003)
Features about this author or title:
1. Author Read-Alike - Toni Morrison
2. Book Discussion Guide - Love
Other related features:
1. Annotated Book List - The Roots of Modern African American Fiction
2. Awards (Best Fiction) - Adult -> Best Fiction -> Literary -> ALA
Notable Books -> 2004
3. Awards (Best Fiction) - Adult -> Best Fiction -> Literary -> Booklist
Editors' Choice -> Best Fiction 2003
4. Awards (Best Fiction) - Adult -> Best Fiction -> Literary -> New
York Times Notable Books -> Fiction and Poetry -> 2003
Author Web Sites:
1. Books and Writers-Toni Morrison : Features a biography of the author.
2. About Toni Morrison : A short biography of the author on the Nobel Prize
web site.
ISBNs Associated with this Title:
0375409440
0375432337 : Hardcover - Large Print
1400078474 : Paperback
0739306987 : CD - Audio
0739307495 : Cassette - Audio
8497935330 : Paperback - Foreign Language
0676976182 : Hardcover
0739342282 : CD - Audio
Credits:
• Novelist/EBSCO Publishing
• Baker & Taylor
• Booklist, published by the American Library Association
• Publishers Weekly, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Library Journal, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Copyright 2005, VNU Business Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved
• Added to NoveList: 20030820
• TID: 120021
Mirror or the glass?, The
by Toni & Slade Morrison ; pictures by Pascal Lemaitre
Author: Morrison, Toni
New York: Scribner, 2004, 32 p.
Other Contributors:
Morrison, Slade: joint author; Lemaitre, Pascal: illustrator
ISBNs Associated with this Title:
0743222504
Credits:
• Novelist/EBSCO Publishing
• Baker & Taylor
• Added to NoveList: 20040920
• TID: 128073
Paradise
Author: Morrison, Toni
Tells the story of Ruby, Oklahoma, an all Black town settled by a dozen families
in the 1890s when they were turned away from other communities. But now it's
the 1970s and the men of the town blame the women and the women's shelter for
the change in their community's character.
New York: A. A. Knopf, copyright 1998, 318 p.
Magill Book Review: PARADISE, Toni Morrison's first novel since she was awarded
the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature, rises easily to the level of her best work.
It takes place in Ruby, Oklahoma, the second incarnation of an all-black town
originally founded by a group of former slaves. Ruby remains largely isolated
from the rest of the world, and its inhabitants prefer it that way. The town
leaders are men who have inherited a passion for freedom, religion, and respect,
but their passion has gradually become distorted into a fanaticism which will
brook no contradiction. They resist any challenge to tradition.
Ruby's patriarchy is ignored by the five independent women who come one by one to live in an old mansion known as the Convent, some seventeen miles from town. The women are Consolata, a former servant at the Convent; Mavis, a battered wife; Gigi, the free- spirited activist; Seneca, who slices her skin with razors; and Pallas, a lonely little rich girl. In the course of the novel they find peace through Consolata, who becomes the consoler her name suggests as she intuitively instructs them in the rites of a very old religion. They exemplify a separation from the rigid, authoritarian ways of Ruby.
The novel begins at its climax, with an attack by the town vigilantes against the Convent, then winds through past events to return to that same attack. Morrison offers a delightful blend of complex characters and magical language. The novel is elliptical, told in Morrison's rich, storyteller voice, creating an effect of increasing illumination, introducing people and events as gradually as dawning light clarifies the interior of a room. -- Essay by Joanne McCarthy.
Publishers Weekly Review: So intense and evocative in its particulars, so wide-ranging in its arch, this is another, if imperfect, triumph for the Nobel Prize-winning author (Song of Solomon; Beloved; etc.). In 1950, a core group of nine old families leaves the increasingly corrupted African American community of Haven, Okla., to found in that same state a new, purer community they call Ruby. But in the early 1970s, the outside world begins to intrude on Ruby's isolation, forcing a tragic confrontation. It's about this time, too, that the first of five damaged women finds solace in a decrepit former convent near Ruby. Once the pleasure palace of an embezzler, the convent had been covered with lascivious fixtures that were packed away or painted over by the nuns. Time has left only "traces of the sisters' failed industry," however, making the building a crumbling, fertile amalgam of feminine piety and female sexuality. It's a woman's world that attracts the women of Ruby--and that repels the men who see its occupants as the locus of all the town's ills. They are "not women locked safely away from men; but worse, women who chose themselves for company, which is to say not a convent but a coven." Only when Morrison treats the convent women as an entity (rather than as individual characters) do they lose nuance, and that's when the book falters. Still, the individual stories of both the women and the townspeople reveal Morrison at her best. Tragic, ugly, beautiful, these lives are the result of personal dreams and misfortune; of a history that encompasses Reconstruction and Vietnam; and of mystical grandeur. 400,000 first printing; simultaneous audio and large print editions (ISBN 0-375-40179-2; -70217-2) (Jan.)
Library Journal Review: Nobel laureate Morrison creates another richly told tale that grapples with her ongoing, central concerns: women's lives and the African American experience. Morrison has created a long list of characters for this story that takes place in the all-black town of Ruby, Oklahoma, population 360, which was founded by freed slaves. In what could be seen as an attempt to create some of the same mysticism that was present in many of her previous works, Morrison alludes to Ruby's founding citizens, now ghosts, and only minimally focuses on the present generations that have let the founding principles of Ruby's forebears deteriorate. Paradise is an examination of the title itself and deliberately builds into a plot that is unexpected and explosive. This is Morrison's first novel since her 1993 Jazz, and it is well worth the wait. Highly Recommended for all collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 10/1/97.]--Emily J. Jones, "Library Journal"
Kirkus Reviews /* Starred Review */ The violence men inflict on women and the
painful irony of an "all-black town" whose citizens themselves become
oppressors are the central themes of Morrison's rich, symphonic seventh novel
(after Jazz, 1992, etc.). The story begins with a scene of Faulknerian intensity:
In 1976, in rural Oklahoma, nine men from the nearby town of Ruby attack a former
convent now occupied by women fleeing from abusive husbands or lovers, or otherwise
unhappy pasts--"women who chose themselves for company," whose solidarity
and solitude rebuke the male-dominated culture that now exacts its revenge.
That sounds simplistic, but the novel isn't, because Morrison makes of it a
many-layered mystery, interweaving the individual stories of these women with
an amazingly compact social history of Ruby's "founding" families
and their interrelationships over several decades. It all comes at us in fragments,
and we gradually piece together the tale of black freedmen after the Civil War
gradually acquiring land and power, taking pride in the culture they've built--vividly
symbolized by a memorial called "the Oven," the site of a communal
field kitchen into whose stone is etched the biblical command "Beware the
Furrow of His Brow." That wrathful prophecy is fulfilled as the years pass,
feuds between families and even a rivalry between twin brothers grow ever more
dangerous, and in the wake of "the desolation that rose after King's murder,"
Ruby succumbs to militancy; a Black Power fist is painted on the Oven, and the
handwriting is on the wall. With astonishing fluency, Morrison connects the
histories of the Convent's insulted and injured women with that of the community
they oppose but cannot escape. Only her very occasional resort to digressive
(and accusatory) summary (e.g., "They think they have outfoxed the whiteman
when in fact they imitate him") mars the pristine surface of an otherwise
impeccably composed, deeply disturbing story. Not perfect--but a breathtaking,
risk-taking major work that will have readers feverishly, and fearfully turning
the pages.
(Kirkus Reviews, December 15, 1997)
Features about this author or title:
1. Author Read-Alike - Toni Morrison
2. Book Discussion Guide - Paradise
Other related features:
1. Author Read-Alike - Toni Morrison
2. Awards (Best Fiction) - Adult -> Best Fiction -> Literary -> New
York Times Notable Books -> Fiction and Poetry -> 1998
3. Awards (Best Fiction) - Adult -> Best Fiction -> Literary -> Oprah's
Book Club
4. Book Discussion Guide - Beloved
5. Book Discussion Guide - Nowhere Else on Earth
6. Book Discussion Guide - Song of Solomon
Author Web Sites:
1. Books and Writers-Toni Morrison : Features a biography of the author.
2. About Toni Morrison : A short biography of the author on the Nobel Prize
web site.
ISBNs Associated with this Title:
0679433740
0452280397 : Paperback
0375401792 : Cassette - Audio
0375702172 : Paperback - Large Print
0878911987 : Paperback
0783883366 : Paperback - Large Print
0452156408 : Paperback
0606158529 : DEMCO Turtleback
0613174283 : Glued Binding
1417671637 : Glued Binding
0756900034 : Glued Binding
Credits:
• Hennepin County Public Library
• Novelist/EBSCO Publishing
• Baker & Taylor
• Booklist, published by the American Library Association
• Magill Book Reviews, published by Salem Press
• Publishers Weekly, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Library Journal, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Copyright 2005, VNU Business Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved
• Added to NoveList: 20010101
• TID: 005361
Poppy or the snake?
Toni & Slade Morrison ; illustrated by Pascal Lemaitre
Author: Morrison, Toni
A version of Aesop's fables finds that kind hearted Poppy is willing to help
snake after he hurts him, but because he is aware and careful he is able to
protect himself.
New York: Scribner, 2004, 40 p.
Other Contributors:
Morrison, Slade: joint author; Lemaitre, Pascal: illustrator
ISBNs Associated with this Title:
0743222490
Credits:
• Novelist/EBSCO Publishing
• Baker & Taylor
• Added to NoveList: 20031120
• TID: 120985
Remember: the journey to school integration
Author: Morrison, Toni
Archival photographs paired with fictional text depicting thoughts and emotions
of students who lived through school desegregation capture the spirit, sadness,
and struggle of the time.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2004, 78 p.
Kirkus Reviews Morrison attempts to tell the story of Southern school integration
through archival photographs oddly juxtaposed with a confusing narrative. Introductory
words explain that Morrison has "imagined the thoughts and feelings of
some of the people in the photographs chosen to help tell this story."
Unfortunately, it's often difficult to tell who is doing the talking. On one
page is a picture of black and white schoolchildren joyfully running out of
school together; on the opposite page are white teenagers tipping a car. The
text for both pages reads, "Great! Now we can have some fun!" Endnotes
place each photo in historic context, but at least one note is inaccurate. Gov.
George Wallace closed Huntsville schools, but the note states "integration
in Huntsville schools took place without incident." Staying closer to the
theme of school integration would have helped keep focus, especially in the
later section, essentially a presentation of every civil-rights icon from Rosa
Parks to Martin Luther King. While it's nice to see familiar photographs collected
in one place, the overall feeling of the narrative is confusion. Younger children
will need adults to help with interpretation. (timeline, photo notes) (Nonfiction.
8-14)
(Kirkus Reviews, April 15, 2004)
Features about this author or title:
1. Author Read-Alike - Toni Morrison
Other related features:
1. Awards (Best Fiction) - Children's -> Best Fiction -> Literary ->
ALA Notable Children's Books -> 2005 -> Middle Readers Category
2. Awards (Best Fiction) - Children's -> Best Fiction -> Literary ->
Coretta Scott King Award -> Authors category
3. Awards (Best Fiction) - Young Adult -> Best Fiction -> Literary ->
Coretta Scott King Award -> Authors category
Author Web Sites:
1. Books and Writers-Toni Morrison : Features a biography of the author.
2. About Toni Morrison : A short biography of the author on the Nobel Prize
web site.
ISBNs Associated with this Title:
061839740X
0618459677 : Hardcover - Juvenile
Credits:
• Novelist/EBSCO Publishing
• Baker & Taylor
• Copyright 2005, VNU Business Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved
• Added to NoveList: 20050320
• TID: 132132
Song of Solomon
Author: Morrison, Toni
Macon Dead, Jr., called Milkman, son of the richest Negro in town, moves from
childhood into early manhood, searching, among the disparate, mysterious members
of his family, for his life and reality
New York: A. A. Knopf; distributed by Random House, 1977, 337 p.
Kirkus Reviews /* Starred Review */ When you know your name, you should hang
on to it, for unless it is noted down and remembered, it will die when you die."
And the scribbled no-name "Macon Dead," given to a newly freed black
man by a drunken Union Army officer, has stained out a family's real name for
three generations, and then we meet the third "Macon Dead," called
"Milkman." Raised among the sour hatreds of the richest black family
in a Michigan town, Milkman learns not to love or make commitments, learns to
turn away from his father's hard, tight greed, his mother's unloved passivity,
his sisters' sterile virginity. He stands apart from his outcast aunt Pilate
(a figure reminiscent of Sula, living beyond all reason), a "raggedy bootlegger"
who keeps her name in a box threaded to one ear. And he stands above the wild
untidy adoration of his cousin Hagar, above the atrocities against blacks in
the 1950s, even while his friend organizes a black execution squad. However,
when Milkman's father opens the door to a family past of murder and flight,
Milkman--in order to steal what he believes is gold--begins the cleansing Odyssean
journey. His wanderings will take him through a wilderness of rich and wonderful
landscapes murmuring with old tales, those real names becoming closer and more
familiar. He beholds eerie appearances (an ancient Circe ringed with fight-eyed
dogs)--and hears the electric singing of children, which holds within it the
pulse of truth. Like other black Americans, Milkman's retrieval of identity
from obliteration helps him to shake off the "Dead" no-name state
of his forebears. And, like all people, his examination of the past gives him
a perspective that liberates the capacity for love. Morrison's narration, accomplished
with such patient delicacy, is both darkly tense and exuberant; fantastic events
and symbolic embellishments simply extend and deepen the validity and grace
of speech and character. The gut-soul of Roots, with which this will be recklessly,
inevitably linked, and a handsome display of a major talent.
(Kirkus Reviews, September 1, 1977)
Features about this author or title:
1. Author Read-Alike - Toni Morrison
2. Book Discussion Guide - Song of Solomon
Other related features:
1. Author Read-Alike - Toni Morrison
2. Awards (Best Fiction) - Adult -> Best Fiction -> Literary -> National
Book Critics Circle Award
3. Awards (Best Fiction) - Adult -> Best Fiction -> Literary -> Oprah's
Book Club
4. Book Discussion Guide - Beloved
5. Book Discussion Guide - Charms for the Easy Life
6. Book Discussion Guide - Go Tell it on the Mountain
7. Book Discussion Guide - Mama Day
8. Book Discussion Guide - Paradise
9. Book Discussion Guide - The Time of our Singing
Author Web Sites:
1. Books and Writers-Toni Morrison : Features a biography of the author.
2. About Toni Morrison : A short biography of the author on the Nobel Prize
web site.
ISBNs Associated with this Title:
0394497848
0452260116 : Paperback
140003342X : Paperback
0679445048 : Hardcover
0452154553 : Paperback
0394550382 : Cassette - Audio
0451182375 : Paperback - Mass Market
0606050922 : DEMCO Turtleback
156849632X : Hardcover
0613014812 : Glued Binding
0679434364 : Hardcover
0452156408 : Paperback
0792719360 : Hardcover - Large Print
081244583X : Glued Binding
0792719352 : Paperback - Large Print
0452155622 : Hardcover
0788734679 : Cassette - Audio
0606313060 : DEMCO Turtleback
0451129334 : Paperback - Mass Market
0756940540 : Glued Binding
Credits:
• Hennepin County Public Library
• Baker & Taylor
• MetaMetrics, Inc.
• Booklist, published by the American Library Association
• Copyright 2005, VNU Business Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved
• Novelist/EBSCO Publishing
• Added to NoveList: 20010101
• TID: 046253
Sula
Toni Morrison ; [with a new foreword by the author]
Author: Morrison, Toni
At the heart of Sula is a bond between two women, a friendship whose intensity
first sustains, then injures. Sula and Nel are both black, both smart, and both
poor. Through their girlhood years, they share everything. All this changes
when Sula gets out of the Bottom, the hilltop neighborhood where there hides
a fierce resentment at the invisible line that cannot be overstepped.
New York: Vintage International, 2004, xvii, 174 p.
Kirkus Reviews /* Starred Review */ In a neighborhood where pain -- "adult
pain that rested somewhere under the eyelids" -- is as pervasively omnipresent
as the loveliness of May's green shade trees, death and its omens can be accepted
as another face of God. But in the closed black community of the high hill overlooking
a white Ohio town, there are two who stand outside the defensive webs of familial
interdependence. There is mad Shadrach, victim of World War I, who defies death's
capricious obscenity by ringing his bell for National Suicide Day every year
-- and one year he has some takers. And Sula, who will die, not like "other
colored girls" rotting like a stump, but falling "like a redwood."
For she is the product of a "household of throbbing disorder" and
had learned isolation and the "meaningless of responsibility" early
when she accidentally caused the drowning of a little boy. Intemperate, restless,
Sula had some of the arrogance of her one-legged grandmother Eva. It was Eva
who had long ago pondered the meaning of love when she used her only food (lard
scrapings) to cure her baby boy's bellyache; yet when her son was a man, regressing
to the womb of drugs, she burnt him to death. Sula also watched her mother die
in flames, conscious only that she wanted the dying dance to go on. She left
the village and returns to become the community's unifying evil -- but will
the people eventually love one who stood against the sky? Miss Morrison, author
of The Bluest Eye (1970) in her deceptively gentle narrative, her dialogue that
virtually speaks from the page, and her multilayered perceptions drawn through
the needle's eye of any consciousness she creates, is undoubtedly a major and
formidable talent, and this is an impressive second novel.
(Kirkus Reviews, January 1, 1973)
Features about this author or title:
1. Author Read-Alike - Toni Morrison
2. Book Discussion Guide - Sula
Other related features:
1. Author Read-Alike - Alice Walker
2. Author Read-Alike - Nella Larsen
3. Author Read-Alike - Toni Morrison
4. Awards (Best Fiction) - Adult -> Best Fiction -> Literary -> Oprah's
Book Club
5. Book Discussion Guide - A Lesson Before Dying
6. Book Discussion Guide - Beloved
7. Book Discussion Guide - Paradise
8. Book Discussion Guide - Song of Solomon
9. Book Discussion Guide - The Grandmothers
10. Book Discussion Guide - Their Eyes Were Watching God
Author Web Sites:
1. Books and Writers-Toni Morrison : Features a biography of the author.
2. About Toni Morrison : A short biography of the author on the Nobel Prize
web site.
ISBNs Associated with this Title:
1400033438
0452263492 : Paperback
0452283868 : Paperback
0375415351 : Hardcover
0394480449 : Hardcover
0451182405 : Paperback - Mass Market
0553756834 : Cassette - Audio
0452260108 : Hardcover
0786246537 : Hardcover - Large Print
0679434364 : Hardcover
0833555405 : Glued Binding
060632500X : DEMCO Turtleback
8497932641 : Paperback - Foreign Language
0613598245 : Glued Binding
1417694807 : Glued Binding
0736687300 : Cassette - Audio
073934336X : CD - Audio
055320517X : Paperback - Mass Market
Credits:
• Hennepin County Public Library
• Novelist/EBSCO Publishing
• Baker & Taylor
• MetaMetrics, Inc.
• Library Journal, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Copyright 2005, VNU Business Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved
• Added to NoveList: 20010101
• TID: 046254
Tar baby
Author: Morrison, Toni
On a tropical island paradise, six people interact with each other in all the
tender or hateful ways that human beings are capable of. Rich and poor, black
and white, young and old, male and female, each has something to teach the others--and
each has something to learn.
New York: A. A. Knopf, 1981, 305 p.