Lift as You Climb is easy to love, but hard to like

Picture books that aim higher are ones that we really enjoy looking at. Guided by their illustrations they teach as much as they educate and entertain. They can also shed light on an area or person that young audiences might not know about or is one that they should be exposed to. Lift As You Climb is a picture book that fits this description. It’s the life story of Ella Baker who was a founding member of the SCLC and a civil rights leader who fought with Martin Luther King Junior.

The art in Lift As You Climb is fabulous. It’s by R. Gregory Christie and his paintings are realistic, passionate and have a folk art vibe that channel the feel of the 1960s. His art is set upon high contrast color pages that further make his art, as well as the words, pop off of the page.

The story is also great. It details her childhood and how her mom used to encourage her on by saying “life as you climb”. Baker went to boarding school in Raleigh then worked as a waitress in New York City where she got a job with the NAACP. As the story is being told we see “what do you hope to accomplish?” in bold letters on many of the pages.

This is a great phrase. We use it with our kids all of the time because it implies that you are expecting a plan of action to actually accomplish a goal. In Baker’s case she wanted black people to have equal rights, receive equal treatment and simply to be treated like citizens. Her life’s arc is impressive and will inspire young audiences that have the patience to read and enjoy Lift As You Climb.

Therein lays the problem with the book. For a non-fiction picture book that is aimed at children aged four through eight it’s simply too long. Lift As You Climb is 43 pages long. Four of those pages are author’s notes, a time line of Baker’s life and a bibliography. Let’s call the book 39 pages long then. If we’re rating a book by its value, then the book is a slam dunk success. It’s worth nothing that there are countless picture books that might also be 39 pages, but their word count is less.

Most of the 39 pages are loaded with beautiful words about a life and person that is worth reading about, but it’ll be too much for most readers that age. If that demographic had scale size coffee tables where they placed the beautiful books that they read so that their friends would be impressed, then this would be in most of their homes.

For most families Lift As You Climb will be a beautiful, lovingly crafted book that the parents will want kids to read, but will bore the pants off of the children. Its message and craft will almost certainly land the book in numerous top 10 book lists at the end of the year-and if the book were 10 pages shorter it would probably be in ours too. Alternately, the book could retain all of the art and simply edit the words by about 40%. As it stands now it’s a very long good-night book that will most likely put kids to sleep before its halfway done, which is not what the story intends or deserves to do.

Lift As You Climb is by Patricia Hruby Powell with art by R. Gregory Christie on Simon & Schuster.

There are affiliate links in this post.