Gather round for Look and Learn – our literacy and art-making program for children ages 5 and under. This monthly storytime adventure connects families to art at the Museum and plants seeds of creativity in growing minds. 

For this month’s Look and Learn, join us as we read My Hands Sing the Blues: Romare Bearden’s Childhood Journey by Jeanne Walker Harvey, Illustrated by Elizabeth Zunon. After the story, view a work in New Symphony of Time by Romare Bearden and participate in a collage activity in our studio classrooms. Dress for mess!

My Hands Sing the Blues: Romare Bearden’s Childhood Journey
As a young boy growing up in North Carolina, Romare Bearden listened to his great-grandmother’s Cherokee stories and heard the whistle of the train that took his people to the North—people who wanted to be free. When Romare boarded that same train, he watched out the window as the world whizzed by. Later he captured those scenes in a famous painting, Watching the Good Trains Go By. Using that painting as inspiration and creating a text influenced by the jazz that Bearden loved, Jeanne Walker Harvey describes the patchwork of daily southern life that Romare saw out the train’s window and the story of his arrival in shimmering New York City. Artists and critics today praise Bearden’s collages for their visual metaphors honoring his past, African American culture, and the human experience. Elizabeth Zunon’s illustrations of painted scenes blended with collage are a stirring tribute to a remarkable artist.