Book art: Roar of Thunder, Hear My Cry

I’ve started doing a series on my Instagram a while back: each time I finish reading a book I commemorate it with an illustration or painting. This time I was writing so much about the book for my Instagram post it made me realize these would also make great blog posts here!

This is for Roar of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor. I wanted to read a classic and I think books like this that discuss the racial tensions and experiences of African Americans in America’s history are especially important to read and talk about right now due to our government’s current administration’s attack and erasure of history like this.

Roar of Thunder, Hear My Cry is a historical fiction novel written by Mildred Taylor in 1976. It’s part of her Logan Family series, with some of the characters being based on her own family members. The story takes place in Mississippi in 1933 (the height of the Great Depression) on the Logan family’s farm, told from Cassie Logan’s perspective. She’s a 4th grader and tomboy who loves hanging out with her brothers: Stacey (older than Cassie), Christopher John (younger than her), and Little Man (youngest).

The moment I decided to depict in my watercolor illustration is when Cassie and her grandma, Big Ma, are sitting on a log in a clearing on their property. It’s a clearing because the trees were chopped down there by white men wanting to buy their property. Big Ma tells Cassie she’s glad her grandfather never had to see it, because he loved those trees. Then she tells Cassie the story again about how they got their land. It’s a beautiful moment in the book and it really stuck out to me.

I could go on and on about this book, I really loved it! But you should definitely read it for yourself if you haven’t already, or read it again if it’s been a while! I need to read more from this series, and this isn’t even the first book! I do think it’s the most well-known, though. I can’t wait to be welcomed back into the Logan family’s home and learn more about each of them! They are lovingly written interesting characters, and Cassie’s older brother Stacey is based on Mildred Taylor’s father, who taught her the importance of storytelling, showing her that it’s a way to pass down family legacies and educate others about history.

Mildred Taylor was born in Mississippi in 1943. Her family moved to Toledo, Ohio when she was still a baby. Although she grew up in Toledo, her family visited their relatives in Mississippi frequently. Taylor attended the University of Toledo and spent 2 years teaching English and history in Ethiopia for the Peace Corps. Then she got her Masters degree in journalism from the University of Colorado. She published her first book in 1975 which was Song of the Trees, the first book in the Logan family series. It was followed by Roar of Thunder, Hear My Cry in 1976.

I used Artist’s Loft brand watercolor pencils, Sakura brand Koi water colors pocket field sketch box, and a Kingart brand fine line ink pen (brush) on Canson brand mixed media paper. Cassie and Big Ma are collaged onto the background.