Standing in the Need of Prayer: A Modern Retelling of the Classic Spiritual

Beginning with images of chattel slavery and ending with spreads showing Black luminaries, the creators offer an absorbing rendition of the legendary spiritual: a legacy in song and portraiture that depicts Black Americans' achievements across an anti-Black history. In Boston Weatherford's four-line verses, those "standing in the need of prayer" describes "families enslaved and sold apart," then "millions on the move in the Great Migration," members of the civil rights movement, and "record-breaking athletes," leading to a contemporary image of children: "It's me, O Lord." Morrison's imagery brings Black history to life, portraying hundreds of years of experiences to the rhythm of a song that moves beyond the religious and into the broadly reverential. Weatherford and Morrison successfully elevate a classic song, rendering it as relevant and profound across time. Ages 6-9. (Sept.)

Gr 1-4--"It's me, it's me, O Lord, / Standing in the need of prayer./ Not my father, not my mother, / but it's me, O Lord, / Standing in the need of prayer." A familiar spiritual is recast as a pledge to remember history and make a better future, and the lockstep of words and art feels as if Weatherford and Morrison were in harmony from the outset.A scene of a slave in shackles and another one for sale gives way to a portrait of Nat Turner and then to one that is an homage to the Emancipation Proclamation and the Great Migration. Portraits, like stepping stones through history, well-explained and documented in the back matter, reference people or moments mentioned in Weatherford's verses, from the Tuskegee Airmen, Duke Ellington and all of Black music, Ruby Bridges, Martin Luther King, Jr., Florence Griffith Joyner, Colin Kaepernick, and Black Lives Matter. The force of the words along with the glowing, sculptural lines of Morrison's paintings will draw onlookers into the journey through time and pain, to two modern children carrying protest signs and facing readers directly, ready and hopeful for what's next. VERDICT An evocative use of prayer as old-school protest with a history lesson that is as lilting as a ballad, this spiritual demands a group setting to be fully appreciated for the uplifting answers it provides.--Kimberly Olson Fakih