Sugar Hill by Carole Boston Weatherford

Historical Verse

Grade Level: K-4

Interest Level: K-4

Themes:  African American History, Harlem Renaissance, Famous African Americans

Related Text: Ellington Was Not a Street by Ntozake Shange

Sugar Hill is a delightful picture to add to your classroom library, not just for Black History month, but for always.  Sugar Hill, a historic neighborhood in New York City’s Harlem, was a thriving center for black culture during the early twentieth century. Carole Boston Weatherford takes us on a stroll through this neighborhood to learn and reflect on a time when famous African Americans, like Duke Ellington, Zora Neale Hurston and W.E.B Dubois , walked the streets with Harlem’s other black residents, and the appreciation for art, education, and culture was palpable.   

This book has great instructional possibility. It is not text heavy and the vibrant, yet simple illustrations, are perfect for picture walks through the text with emerging readers.   The simple, rhyming verse provides repetition and various font types/colors, which make it a good choice for a variety of effective read alouds. For example,  “Sugar Hill, Sugar Hill where life is sweet,” repeats five times in the book which provides an opportunity for Choral Jump In reading. The text has a rhythm that draws the reader in, helping to create the vibrancy  of life that was  Sugar Hill during this time in history.

Informational text at the back of the book is a bonus for reading instruction. There is an author’s note that provides information on Sugar Hill and it’s residents, as well as brief “Sugar Hill’s Who’s Who” biographies on some of the neighborhoods most famous residents.

Go ahead, go get it. Your classroom library will thank you.

See also - Ellington Was Not a Street by Ntozake Shange