Congratulations to award-winning Islesford artist and author

Ashley Bryan

Ashley F. Bryan (born July 13, 1923) has just won another award - the 2020 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for non-fiction for his autobiography Infinite Hope. Infinite Hope was also a 2020 Coretta Scott King Honor Award winning book. Presented annually since 1967, the Globe-Horn awards – which also are given for picture books and for fiction or poetry – are considered among the most prestigious honors in the field of children’s and young adult literature.

On July 13, 2020–Ashley's 97th birthday–Maine Governor Janet Mills declared the day "Ashley Frederick Bryan Day" in Maine: Portland Press Herald

The library has a number of Mr. Bryan’s books available, including Infinite Hope. Please call us to reserve some today: 207-276-5306. And the next time you are on Islesford, stop by the Ashley Bryan Center to see some of his art: ashleybryancenter.org

Additional awards for Ashley Bryan

Mr. Bryan has been honored numerous times, including multiple Coretta Scott King Awards and honors for illustration, the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award from the Pennsylvania State University, the Lupine Award from the Maine Library Association, and the Golden Kite Award for nonfiction.

Books written and/or illustrated by Ashley Bryan

• Black Boy by Richard Wright, illustrator (1950)
• Fabliaux: Ribald Tales from the Old French translated by Robert Hellman and Richard O’Gorman (1965, 1966)
• Moon, For What Do You Wait? Poems by Rabindranath Tagore (1967)
• Walk Together Children: Black American Spirituals Vol 1 (1974)
• The Adventures of Aku (1976)
• The Dancing Granny (1977)
• I Greet the Dawn: Poems by Paul Laurence Dunbar (1978)
• Jethro and the Jumbie by Susan Cooper (1979)
• Jim Flying High by Mari Evans (1979)
• I’m Going to Sing: Black American Spirituals Vol 2 (1982)
• The Cat’s Purr (1985)
• Beat the Story-Drum, Pum-Pum (1987)
• Lion and the Ostrich Chicks and Other African Folk Poems (1986)
• What a Morning: The Christmas Story in Black Spirituals by John Langstaff (1987)
• Sh-Ko and his Eight Wicked Brothers illustrated by Fumio Yoshimura (1988)
• Turtle Knows Your Name (1989)
• All Night, All Day: A Child’s First Book of African-American Spirituals (1991)
• Climbing Jacob’s Ladder by John Langstaff (1991)
• Christmas Gif’: An Anthology of Christmas Poems, Songs and Stories Written by and About African-Americans by Charemae Rollins (1993)
• The Ox of the Wonderful Horns and Other African Folktales (1993)
• The Story of Lightning and Thunder (1993)
• What a Wonderful World by George David Weiss and Bob Thiele (1995)
• The Story of the Three Kingdoms by Walter Dean Myers (1997)
• Ashley Bryan’s African Tales, Uh Huh (1998)
• Carol of the Brown King: Nativity Poems by Langston Hughes (1998)
• The House with No Door: African Riddle-Poems by Brian Swann (1998)
• Aneesa Lee and the Weaver’s Gift by Nikki Grimes (1999)
• Jump Back, Honey: The Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar co-illustrated by Carole Byard, Jan Spivey Gilchrist, Jerry Pinkney, and Faith Ringgold (1999)
• The Night Has Ears: African Proverbs (1999)
• Why Leopard Has Spots, Dan Stories from Liberia by Won-Ldy Paye and Margaret H. Lippert (1999)
• How God Fix Jonah by Lorenz Graham (2000)
• Salting the Ocean: 100 Poems by Young Poets by Naomi Shahab Nye (2000)
• Ashley Bryan’s ABC of African American Poetry (2001)
• Beautiful Blackbird (2003)
• A Nest Full of Stars by James Berry (2004)
• Let It Shine: Three Favorite Spirituals (2007)
• My America by Jan Spivey Gilchrist, co-illustrator (2007)
• All Things Bright and Beautiful by Cecil Alexander (2010)
• Who Built the Stable? (2012)
• Can’t Scare Me (2013)
• Ashley Bryan’s Puppets (2014)
• By Trolley Past Thimbleton Bridge illustrated by Marvin Bileck (2015)
• Sail Away by Langston Hughes (2015)
• Freedom Over Me: Eleven Slaves, Their Lives and Dreams Brought to Life (2016)
• I Am Loved by Nikki Giovanni (2018)
• Infinite Hope: A Black Artist’s Journey from World War II to Peace (2020)

Filmography

• I Know a Man...Ashley Bryan (2016) - Richard Kane, director

Stage Works

American composer Alvin Singleton composed Sing to the Sun, a commissioned work for the 1995-1996 season by a consortium of five musical festivals. The work consisted of a chamber orchestra made up of an oboe, clarinet, viola, piano and percussion, children's voices and a narrator, and drew upon the collection of poems by Bryan entitled Sing to the Sun: Poems and Pictures. Bryan himself narrated the premiere and all the following performances.

On June 10, 2017 the world premiere of Alliance Theatre’s production Dancing Granny took place at the Oglethorpe University's Conant Performing Arts Center in Atlanta, Georgia. The musical play was adapted for the stage from Bryan's book of the same name with music composed by Jireh Breon Holder and choreography by Ameenah Kaplan.

In 2018, Bryan collaborated with composer Aaron Robinson on an African-American requiem titled A Tender Bridge; a 90-minute, 13 movement work that celebrates Bryan's life and career based on his writings that uses "jazz, ragtime, Negro spirituals, Southern hymns and other musical idioms, along with a full choir, gospel choir, children’s choir, orchestra jazz ensemble and multiple narrators."