![]() ![]() In summer they go up to the tar-paper roof of their tenement - Tar Beach! - and there Mom, Dad and the next-door neighbors eat, laugh and tell stories around an old green card table, while Cassie and her little brother lie on a mattress dreaming that the whole city is theirs and there is no one to say no. Though these details might not make much sense to young children, what will captivate them is the way the lighthearted Lightfoot family threshes pleasure out of their lives in spite of what they can't do and don't have. He is a construction worker who works on bridges and skyscrapers but he is kept out of the union by racial discrimination and because his own father wasn't a member. In Faith Ringgold's first picture book, "Tar Beach," Cassie Louise Lightfoot is the lucky little girl who gets to float up over the New York City of the 1930's, and wear the George Washington Bridge "like a giant diamond necklace." She lives in Harlem, and the restraints on her life come home to her through her father's pain. To fly! To fly freely over the housetops and through the great glowing chains that hold the bridges up - there isn't a child who doesn't dream of waking up one day with wings. ![]()
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