Anthem: The Undefeated by Kwame Alexander and Kadir Nelson

This is for the unforgettable.
The swift and sweet ones
who hurdled history...

Kwame Alexander, Newbery Award author, collaborating with two-time Caldecott winner Kadir Nelson in their forthcoming The Undefeated (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019) have composed an ode to the endurance and survival of African Americans through history. There are the famed athletes--Jesse Owens defying Hitler in the Berlin Olympics, Wilma Rudolph, the first American woman to win three Olympic gold medals, Serena Williams with 39 grand-slam tennis wins. There are the social leaders--Harriet Tubman, John Lewis, Martin Luther King, leading followers forward and speaking for The Unspeakables and the Unspoken, those who did not live to speak or lead ....

This is for the unflappable,
The sophisticated ones
who tackle vision
who shine
their light for the world to see...

The writers and poets, like Langston Hughes and Zora Neal Houston and the colonial poet honored by George Washington, Phyllis Wheatley, those who left their words for their times and for posterity, are here. And then there are other creators...

The We Real Cool ones...

There is Monk at the keyboard, there are Miles and Louis with their horns and Ella James and Duke Ellington and Billie Holiday wearing her gardenias, making our music.

The ones who survived
America
by any means necessary.

Kwame Alexander's narration is an ode to the known and the unknown of the past and present, spoken in strong, direct language, celebrating the achievement, bravery, and resilience of a people who have endured. Kadir Nelson's equally powerful oil paintings are superb, with heroic, almost monumental figures in sinewy motion left to right through the pages, or in double page spreads of families, men, women, and children who steadfastly look out at the reader from across time--the Undefeated.

We are in our own history "as a fish is in water," and we are all in it together, and this is a masterful and moving look at part of that history to share with almost all ages of readers. This book is a first purchase for schools and public libraries and a beautiful book to be shared everywhere. The stars came out for this book, with starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Booklist, School Library Journal, Horn Book, and Kirkus. and with the stunning quality of its text and illustrations, this one will surely appear on 2019 awards nominations lists, and rightfully so.