Ragtime Tumpie - Softcover

Grade 2-5-- Full-page paintings in mellow tones of gold and brown, with warm touches of rosy pink, show black Americans in turn-of-the-century St. Louis. Smiling workers, musicians, and housewives surround the small, appealing figure of the young girl who would one day be the famous Josephine Baker. The accompanying text tells how "Tumpie," as she was then called, spent her days picking half-rotted fruit from the freight yards and gathering coal fallen from the hopper cars. At night, Tumpie would go with her mother to the honky-tonks, to hear ragtime music and to dance to the "syn-co-pa-tion" of the drums. When, one day, a traveling peddlar staged a dance contest in the neighborhood, Tumpie won the prize, a shiny silver dollar, and knew that dance would be her life. The story of Tumpie is fiction, based on what is known of Baker's early years, and a brief note describes the entertainer's later career. The book can be used as fictionalized biography to introduce Baker, a black woman who found fame and fortune in Europe earlier in this century. However, its most obvious use, magnificently achieved in the vibrant illustrations, is to present a slice-of-American-life in an urban black community, and to show the capacity of music and dance to enrich the lives of people even in the poorest of material circumstances. --Shirley Wilton, Ocean County College, Toms River, NJ
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

An incident from the childhood of entertainer Josephine Baker is stunningly brought to life. In a boxed review, PW noted that the "fully developed picture book . . . resonates with the sights and colors of the turn-of-the-century era it describes. Fuchs's rich paintings are luminous and golden." Ages 4-8.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.