Lyons’ reunion morning, when the family packed to leave for a road trip down south compellingly recalls the Caldecott Honor winning collaboration from Cynthia Rylant and Stephen Gamell titled The Relatives Came, which is a festive account of northern state kin taking an annual trip south to immerse with a boisterous clan with similar taste in how to have a good time. Minter’s rich textures usher in Going Down Home with Daddy with a vivid burnished front cover depiction of four young African-Americans in a scene from the text proper heading over to a farmyard location carrying some creative samples. Minter himself scored mightily not once but twice in 2019, with his allegorical and incandescent historical work The Women Who Caught the Babies exhibiting gorgeous paintings that have had many amazed at the inconceivably high level of art possible in today’s children’s literature. Yet, this inspired collaboration pushes all the Caldecott buttons while serving as an indelible showcase for Minter’s frame-worthy art which talented students and adults may find too alluring not to revisit for the irresistible visual immersion. However as insiders well know the awards are given for interaction between the art and the words unless the subject is wordless in which case the yardstick is the manner the art replaces the prose. If the sole criteria for winning the Caldecott Medal is pictorial resplendence then Minter should be showered in gold. The artist’s modus operandi is acrylic wash which seems to be an inspired artistic choice for author Kelly Starling Lyon’s dreamy prose for this soulful and sensory impressionist fever dream. Lush, exquisite and painterly there is no picture book released in 2019 as beautiful as Going Down Home with Daddy, a celebration of family from the extraordinary Daniel Minter. And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

Going down home with daddy