A Gift From Greensboro

“An elegant, important story—lovingly and beautifully told.” –Jacqueline Woodson, Brown Girl Dreaming

"I'm delighted to find a book that shows the next generation of American children one of the positive changes that have taken place in this country over the last 50-odd years: friendships like this one. It's nice to find these two friends making history in their own ways." —Marylin Nelson, A Wreath for Emmett Till

“A Gift from Greensboro is an elegant, elegiac time capsule of a childhood friendship innocently thriving in the midst of a racial history lost to time, commerce and gentrification. In gently charged lines, Quraysh Ali Lansana’s enthralling poem is brought to majestic life through Skip Hill’s vibrant visual acuity, capturing a time and place peopled in history, nostalgia and memory where detailed sketches of faces, figures, body parts and iconic imagery is peppered with the finest black-and-white meticulous detail and splotches of vibrant color, creating rich juxtapositions of text and imagery belying racial realities unable to interrupt genuine human connection. A Gift for Greensboro is a gift for those of us who value our first deep-seated relationships and long for our innocence, even as it is trapped in moments of precarious political poignancy where memory eludes nostalgia enough to defy the turmoil of history teeming around us as we ride our bikes, play, and share milkshakes and burgers at once-segregated dime store lunch counters."—Tony Medina, The President Looks Like Me & Other Poems

"A Gift From Greensboro is just that...an accessible, layered, and utterly moving treasure for children and their parents. Lansana's gorgeously illustrated poem tells a story about what was, what is, and what's possible as it pertains to race relations in a country that is split at the root. Its tale of interracial friendship against a backdrop of historic division is a perfect tool for parents who wish to engage in dialogues with their children about the world that they are inheriting, which is to say, a world they have the power to change." —Samantha Thornhill, poet for Odetta: The Queen of Folk