It Jes’ Happened: When Bill Traylor Started to Draw

Description

A biography of twentieth-century African American folk artist Bill Traylor a former slave who at the age of eighty-five began to draw pictures based on his memories and observations of rural and urban life in Alabama. Includes an afterword author’s note and sources (publisher)

Growing up as an enslaved boy on an Alabama cotton farm Bill Traylor worked all day in the hot fields. When slavery ended Bill’s family stayed on the farm as sharecroppers. There Bill grew to manhood raised his own family and cared for the land and his animals.
By the time he was eighty-one Bill was all alone on his farm. He moved to Montgomery the capital of Alabama. Lonely and poor he wandered the busy downtown streets. But deep within himself Bill had a reservoir of memories of working and living on the land and soon those memories blossomed into pictures. Bill began to draw people places and creatures from his earlier life as well as scenes of the city around him. Today Bill Traylor is considered to be one of the most important self-taught American folk artists.
Winner of Lee & Low’s New Voices Award Honor It Jes’ Happened is a lively tribute to a man who has enriched the world with more than twelve hundred warm energetic and often humorous pictures. 32 pages
Accelerated Reading Level 4.8
Ages 6-9