Portraits and Dreams revisits photographs created by Kentucky schoolchildren in the 1970s and the place where their photos were made. Photographer and artist Wendy Ewald, who guided the students in making their visionary photographs, returns to Kentucky and learns how the lives and visions of her former students have changed. The film combines the new narratives and insights of the now adult students.

Film maker, Wendy Ewald, has published extensively on topics illuminated in Portraits and Dreams You can explore her full bibliography on her website: www.wendyewald.com/books. Select titles are highlighted below:

Ewald, Wendy and Alexandra Lightfoot. I Wanna Take Me a Picture: Teaching Photography and Writing to Children. New York, New York: Beacon Press, 2002
Written for parents and teachers, I Wanna Take Me a Picture is an accessible and practical guide to getting children involved in photography. Through a series of lessons from self-portraiture to representing their dreams- it teaches everything a beginner needs to know: how to compose a picture, set up a darkroom and develop film.

Ewald, Wendy. Portraits and Dreams. MACK
This collection of photographs and essays was born out of Wendy Ewald's experiences teaching young children in Eastern Kentucky. The photographs included reflect the work of these young children and include self-portraits, family portraits, and photographs meant to capture the childrens' dreams.

Ewald, Wendy and Katherine Hyde, et al.. Literacy and Justice Through Photography: A Classroom Guide. New York, New York: Teachers College Press, 2011.
This practical guide will help teachers to use the acclaimed “Literacy Through Photography” method developed by Wendy Ewald to promote critical thinking, self-expression, and respect in the classroom.

Bageant, Joe. Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War. New York: Broadway Books, 2008.
Years before Hillbilly Elegy and White Trash, a raucous, truth-telling look at the white working poor — and why they have learned to hate liberalism. What it adds up to, he asserts, is an unacknowledged class war. By turns tender, incendiary, and seriously funny, this book is a call to arms for fellow progressives with little real understanding of “the great beery, NASCAR-loving, church-going, gun-owning America that has never set foot in a Starbucks.”Deer Hunting with Jesus is Joe Bageant’s report on what he learned when he moved back to his hometown of Winchester, Virginia. Like countless American small towns, it is fast becoming the bedrock of a permanent underclass. Two in five of the people in his old neighborhood do not have high school diplomas or health care. Alcohol, overeating, and Jesus are the preferred avenues of escape.

Bickley, Ancella R. & Ewen, Linda Ann (Eds.). Memphis Tennessee Garrison: The Remarkable Story of a Black Appalachian Woman. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2001.
As a black Appalachian woman, Memphis Tennessee Garrison belonged to a demographic category triply ignored by historians.
The daughter of former slaves, she moved to McDowell County, West Virginia, at an early age and died at ninety-eight in Huntington. The coalfields of McDowell County were among the richest seams in the nation. As Garrison makes clear, the backbone of the early mining work force—those who laid the railroad tracks, manned the coke ovens, and dug the coal—were black miners. These miners and their families created communities that became the centers of the struggle for unions, better education, and expanded civil rights. Memphis Tennessee Garrison, an innovative teacher, administrative worker at U.S. Steel, and vice president of the National Board of the NAACP at the height of the civil rights struggle (1963-66), was involved with all of these struggles.
In many ways, this oral history, based on interview transcripts, is the untold and multidimensional story of African American life in West Virginia, as seen through the eyes of a remarkable woman. She portrays courageous people who organize to improve their working conditions, send their children to school and then to college, own land, and support a wide range of cultural and political activities.

Blizzard, William C. and Wess Harris. When Miners March. Oakland: PM Press, 2010.
In the first half of the 20th century, strikes and Union battles, murders and frame-ups, were common in every industrial center in the U.S. But none of these episodes compared in scope to the West Virginia Mine Wars. The uprisings of coal miners that defined the Mine Wars of the 1920’s were a direct result of the Draconian rule of the coal companies. The climax was the Battle of Blair Mountain, the largest open and armed rebellion in U.S. history. The Battle, and Union leader Bill Blizzard’s quest for justice, was only quelled when the U.S. Army brought guns, poison gas and aerial bombers to stop the 10,000 bandanna-clad miners who formed the spontaneous “Red Neck Army.” Over half a century ago, William C. Blizzard wrote the definitive insider’s history of the Mine Wars and the resulting trial for treason of his father, the fearless leader of the Red Neck Army. Events dramatized in John Sayles film Matewan, and fictionalized in Denise Giardina’s stirring novel Storming Heaven, are here recounted as they occurred. This is a people's history, complete with previously unpublished family photos and documents. If it brawls a little, and brags a little, and is angry more than a little, well, the people in this book were that way.

Bragg, Rick. All Over But the Shoutin’.New York: Random House, 1997.
A moving account of one man’s determination to rewrite his family history and to carve out a life for himself based on the strength of his mother’s encouragement and belief. Written with refreshing honesty and marvelous humor, it paints an unforgettable picture of the love and suffering that lie at the heart of every family.

Catte, Elizabeth. What You are Getting Wrong about Appalachia. Cleveland, Ohio: Belt Publishing, 2018.
What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia is a frank assessment of America's recent fascination with the people and problems of the region. The book analyzes trends in contemporary writing on Appalachia, presents a brief history of Appalachia with an eye toward unpacking Appalachian stereotypes, and provides examples of writing, art, and policy created by Appalachians as opposed to policy for Appalachians. The book offers a must-needed insider's perspective on the region.

Caudill, Harry. Night Comes to the Cumberlands: A Biography of a Depressed Era. New York, New York: Little Brown and Co, 1963.
In 1962 Harry Caudill, a lawyer and legislator, decided to shine a light on the conditions he witnessed in Eastern Kentucky. Starting with a history of the region, from its first white settlements through to the Civil war. Night Comes to the Cumberlands focused nationwide attention on the plight of Appalachia’s residents in 1963. Caudill’s contribution to the region is complex, and his ethics of representing Applachian life and people have been necessarily critiqued.

DeRosier, Linda Scott. Creeker: A Woman’s Journey.Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 2002.
Linda Sue Preston was born on a feather bed in the upper room of her Grandma Emmy's log house in the hills of eastern Kentucky. More than fifty years later, Linda Scott DeRosier has come to believe that you can take a woman out of Appalachia but you can't take Appalachia out of the woman. DeRosier's humorous and poignant memoir is the story of an educated and cultured woman who came of age in Appalachia. She remains unabashedly honest about and proud of her mountain heritage. Now a college professor, decades and notions removed from the creeks and hollows, DeRosier knows that her roots run deep in her memory and language and in her approach to the world. DeRosier describes an Appalachia of complexity and beauty rarely seen by outsiders. Hers was a close-knit world; she says she was probably eleven or twelve years old before she ever spoke to a stranger. She lovingly remembers the unscheduled, day-long visits to friends and family, when visitors cheerfully joined in the day's chores of stringing beans or bedding out sweet potatoes. No advance planning was needed for such trips. Residents of Two-Mile Creek were like family, and everyone was "delighted to see each other wherever, whenever, and for however long." Creeker is a story of relationships, the challenges and consequences of choice, and the impact of the past on the present. It also recalls one woman's struggle to make and keep a sense of self while remaining loyal to the people and traditions that sustained her along life's way. Told with wit, candor, and zest, this is Linda Scott DeRosier's answer to the question familiar in Appalachia--"Who are your people?”

Fisher, Stephen et al. Fighting Back in Appalachia: Traditions of Resistance and Change. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1993.
Sixteen original essays document the extent and variety of citizen resistance and struggle in the Appalachian region since 1960. The contributors-all organizers or activist intellectuals-describe how and why some of the dramatic Appalachian resistance efforts and strategies have arisen. Contributors: Bill Allen, Mary K. Anglin, Fran Ansley, Alan Banks, Dwight Billings, Mary Beth Bingman, Sherry Cable, Guy and Candie Carawan, Richard A. Couto, Stephen William Foster, John M. Glen, Hal Hamilton, Bennett M. Judkins, Don Manning-Miller, Ellen Ryan, Jim Sessions, Joe Szakos, Karen Tice, Chris Weiss, and the editor.

hooks, bell. Belonging: A Culture of Place. New York, New York: Routledge, 2009
What does it mean to call a place home? Who is allowed to become a member of a community? When can we say that we truly belong? These are some of the questions of place and belonging that renowned cultural critic bell hooks examines in her new book, Belonging: A Culture of Place. Traversing past and present, this book charts a cyclical journey in which hooks moves from place to place, from country to city and back again, only to end where she began--her old Kentucky home.
hooks has written provocatively about race, gender, and class; and in this book she turns her attention to focus on issues of land and land ownership. Reflecting on the fact that 90% of all black people lived in the agrarian South before mass migration to northern cities in the early 1900s, she writes about black farmers, about black folks who have been committed both in the past and in the present to local food production, to being organic, and to finding solace in nature. Naturally, it would be impossible to contemplate these issues without thinking about the politics of race and class. Reflecting on the racism that continues to find expression in the world of real estate, she writes about segregation in housing and economic racialized zoning. In these critical essays, hooks finds surprising connections that link the environment and sustainability to the politics of race and class that reach far beyond Kentucky.

Mandrona, April and Claudia Mitchell. Visual Encounters in the Study of Rural Childhoods. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2018.
Visual Encounters in the Study of Rural Childhoods brings together visual studies and childhood studies to explore images of childhood in the study of rurality and rural life. The volume highlights how the voices of children themselves remain central to investigations of rural childhoods. Contributions look at representations and experiences of rural childhoods from both the Global North and Global South (including U.S., Canada, Haiti, India, Sweden, Slovenia, South Africa, Russia, Timor-Leste, and Colombia) and consider visuals ranging from picture books to cell phone video to television

Mann, Jeff. Loving Mountains, Loving Men. Athens: University of Ohio Press, 2005.
Loving Mountains, Loving Men is the first book-length treatment of a topic rarely discussed or examined: gay life in Appalachia. Appalachians are known for their love of place, yet many gays and lesbians from the mountains flee to urban areas. Jeff Mann tells the story of one who left and then returned, who insists on claiming and celebrating both regional and erotic identities. In memoir and poetry, Mann describes his life as an openly gay man who has remained true to his mountain roots. Mann recounts his upbringing in Hinton, a small town in southern West Virginia, as well as his realization of his homosexuality, his early encounters with homophobia, his coterie of supportive lesbian friends, and his initial attempts to escape his native region in hopes of finding a freer life in urban gay communities. Mann depicts his difficult search for a romantic relationship, the family members who have given him the strength to defy convention, his anger against religious intolerance and the violence of homophobia, and his love for the rich folk culture of the Highland South. His character and values shaped by the mountains, Mann has reconciled his homosexuality with both traditional definitions of Appalachian manhood and his own attachment to home and kin. Loving Mountains, Loving Men is a compelling, universal story of making peace with oneself and the wider world.

Mann, Sally. Hold Still: A Memoir With Photographs New York, New York: Little Brown & Co, 2015.
Hold Still is a unique interplay of narrative and image, Mann’s preoccupation with family, race, mortality, and the landscape of the American South are revealed as almost genetically predetermined, written into her DNA by the family history that precedes her.
In lyrical prose and startlingly revealing photographs, she crafts a totally original form of personal history that has the page- turning drama of a great novel but is firmly rooted in the fertile soil of her own life.

Matthews-Lewis, Helen. Living Social Justice in Appalachia, Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 2012.
Often referred to as the leader of inspiration in Appalachian studies, Helen Matthews Lewis linked scholarship with activism and encouraged deeper analysis of the region. Lewis shaped the field of Appalachian studies by emphasizing community participation and challenging traditional perceptions of the region and its people. This collection of Lewis's writings and memories that document hers life and work, begins in 1943 with her job on the yearbook staff at Georgia State College for Women with Mary Flannery O'Connor.

Portelli, Alessandro. They Say in Harlan County: An Oran History. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Made famous in the 1976 documentary Harlan County USA, this pocket of Appalachian coal country has been home to generations of miners--and to some of the most bitter labor battles of the 20th century. It has also produced a rich tradition of protest songs and a wealth of fascinating culture and custom that has remained largely unknown by outsiders, until now.

Sonnie, Amy and James Tracy. Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels, and Black Power. New York, Melville House, 2011.
The historians of the late 1960s have emphasized the work of a group of white college activists who courageously took to the streets to protest the war in Vietnam and continuing racial inequality. Poor and working-class whites have tended to be painted as spectators, reactionaries, and, even, racists. Most Americans, the story goes, just watched the political movements of the sixties go by. James Tracy and Amy Sonnie, who have been interviewing activists from the era for nearly ten years, reject this old narrative. They show that poor and working-class radicals, inspired by the Civil Rights movement, the Black Panthers, and progressive populism, started to organize significant political struggles against racism and inequality during the 1960s and 1970s. Exploring an untold history of the New Left, the book shows how these groups helped to redefine community organizing—and transforms the way we think about a pivotal moment in U.S. history.

Slone, Verna Mae. What My Heart Wants to Tell. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1988 (first published 1979)
"God knew that it would take brave and sturdy people to survive in these beautiful but rugged hills. So He sent us His very strongest men and women." So begins the heartwarming story of Verna Mae and her father, Isom B. ""Kitteneye"" Slone, an extraordinary personal family history set in the hills around Caney Creek in Knott County, Kentucky.

Tate, Linda. Power in the Blood: A Family Narrative (Race, Ethnicity, and Gender in Appalachia).Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2009.
Power in the Blood: A Family Narrative traces Linda Tate’s journey to rediscover the Cherokee-Appalachian branch of her family and provides an unflinching examination of the poverty, discrimination, and family violence that marked their lives. In her search for the truth of her own past, Tate scoured archives, libraries, and courthouses throughout Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Illinois, and Missouri, visited numerous cemeteries, and combed through census records, marriage records, court cases, local histories, old maps, and photographs. As she began to locate distant relatives — fifth, sixth, seventh cousins, all descended from her great-great grandmother Louisiana — they gathered in kitchens and living rooms, held family reunions, and swapped stories. A past that had long been buried slowly came to light as family members shared the pieces of the family’s tale that had been passed along to them.
Power in the Blood is a dramatic family history that reads like a novel, as Tate’s compelling narrative reveals one mystery after another. Innovative and groundbreaking in its approach to research and storytelling, Power in the Blood shows that exploring a family story can enhance understanding of history, life, and culture and that honest examination of the past can lead to healing and liberation in the present.

Trotter, Otis.Keeping Heart: A Memoir of Family Struggle, Race, and Medicine.Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2015.
Organized around the life histories, medical struggles, and recollections of Trotter and his thirteen siblings, the story begins in 1914 with his parents, Joe William Trotter Sr. and Thelma Odell Foster Trotter, in rural Alabama. By telling his story alongside the experiences of his parents as well as his siblings, Otis reveals cohesion and tensions in twentieth-century African American family and community life in Alabama, West Virginia, and Ohio.
This engaging chronicle illuminates the journeys not only of a black man born with heart disease in the southern Appalachian coalfields, but of his family and community. It fills an important gap in the literature on an under examined aspect of American experience: the lives of blacks in rural Appalachia and in the nonurban endpoints of the Great Migration. Its emotional power is a testament to the importance of ordinary lives.

Walls, Jeannette . The Glass Castle: A Memoir. New York: Scribner, 2006.
A remarkable memoir of resilience and redemption, and a revelatory look into a family at once deeply dysfunctional and uniquely vibrant. When sober, Jeannette’s brilliant and charismatic father captured his children’s imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and how to embrace life fearlessly. But when he drank, he was dishonest and destructive. Her mother was a free spirit who abhorred the idea of domesticity and didn’t want the responsibility of raising a family.
The Walls children learned to take care of themselves. They fed, clothed, and protected one another, and eventually found their way to New York. Their parents followed them, choosing to be homeless even as their children prospered.

Cash, Wiley. A Land More Kind Than Home. New York, New York: William Morrow Paperbacks, 2013.
In the opening pages of A Land More Kind than Home, two young boys go to church one Sunday morning only to witness something they never should have seen. What allows is an unimaginable violence that must be untangled by a local sheriff with his own tragic past. It is a devastating portrait of faith, betrayal, and deliverance in North Carolina.

Franks, Julia. Over the Plain Houses. Spartanburg, South Carolina: Hub City Press, 2016.
Over the Plain Houses is the story of a woman intrigued by the possibility of change, escape, and reproductive choice - stalked by a Bible-haunted man who fears his government and stakes his integrity upon an older way of life. As Brodis chases his demons, he brings about a final act of violence that shakes the entire valley. In this spellbinding Southern story, Franks exposes the myths and mysteries that modernity can’t quite dispel.

Frazier, Charles. Cold Mountain. New York, New York: Grove Press, 2017.
Cold Mountain is the extraordinary tale of a soldier’s perilous journey back to his beloved at the end of the Civil War is at once an enthralling adventure, a stirring love story, and a luminous evocation of a vanished land.

Giardina, Denise. Storming Heaven. Ivy Books, 1988.
Annadel, West Virginia, was a small town rich in coal, farms, and close-knit families, all destroyed when the coal company came in. It stole everything it hadn't bothered to buy -- land deeds, private homes, and ultimately, the souls of its men and women.
In 1921, an army of 10,000 unemployed pro-union coal miners took up arms and threatened to overthrow the governments of two West Virginia counties. They were greeted by U.S. Army airplanes, bombs, and poison gas. This book recounts the real story of what happened--and where it all went wrong.
Four people tell this powerful, deeply moving tale: Activist Mayor C. J. Marcum. Fierce, loveless union man Rondal Lloyd. Gutsy nurse Carrie Bishop, who loved Rondal. And lonely, Sicilian immigrant Rosa Angelelli, who lost four sons to the deadly mines. They all bear witness to nearly forgotten events of history, culminating in the final, tragic Battle of Blair Mountain--the first crucial battle of a war that has yet to be won.

Holbrook, Chris. Upheaval. Lexington: University of Kentucky, 2010.
In 1995, Chris Holbrook burst onto the southern literary scene with Hell and Ohio: Stories of Southern Appalachia, stories that Robert Morgan described as "elegies for land and lives disappearing under mudslides from strip mines and new trailer parks and highways." Now, with the publication of Upheaval, Holbrook more than answers the promise of that auspicious debut. In eight interrelated stories set in Eastern Kentucky, Holbrook again captures a region and its people as they struggle in the face of poverty, isolation, change, and the devastation of land and resources at the hands of the coal and timber industries. In the title story, Haskell sees signs of disaster all around him, from the dangers inherent in the strip-mining machinery he and his coworkers operate to the accident waiting to happen when his son plays with a socket wrench. Holbrook employs a native's ear for dialect and turns of phrase to reveal his characters' complex interior lives. In "The Timber Deal," two brothers -- Russell, a recovering addict recently released from prison, and Dwight, who hasn't worked since being injured in a coal truck accident -- try to convince their upwardly mobile sister, Helen, to agree to lease out timber rights to the family land. Dwight is unable to communicate his feelings, even as he seethes with rage: "Helen can't see past herself, is what it is. If John James had fractured his back in two places, it'd be a different story. If he'd broke his neck, it'd be a different story told." Written with a gritty, unflinching realism reminiscent of the work of Larry Brown and Cormac McCarthy, the stories in Upheaval prove that Holbrook is not only a faithful chronicler and champion of Appalachia's working poor but also one of the most gifted writers of his generation.

House, Silas. Clay's Quilt. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books, 2001.
After his mother is killed, four-year-old Clay Sizemore finds himself alone in a small Appalachian mining town. At first, unsure of Free Creek, he slowly learns to lean on its residents as family. There’s Aunt Easter, who is always filled with a sense of foreboding, bound to her faith above all; quiltmaking Uncle Paul; untamable Evangeline; and Alma, the fiddler whose song winds its way into Clay’s heart. Together, they help Clay fashion a quilt of a life from what treasured pieces surround him.

McCrumb, Sharon. The Ballad of Tom Dooley. New York, New York: Press, Thomas Dunne Books. 2015
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley…The folk song, made famous by the Kingston Trio, recounts a tragedy in the North Carolina mountains after the Civil War. Laura Foster, a simple country girl, was murdered and her lover Tom Dula was hanged for the crime.
With the help of historians, lawyers, and researchers, Sharyn McCrumb visited the actual sites, studied the legal evidence, and uncovered a missing piece of the story that will shock those who think they already know what happened—and may also bring belated justice to an innocent man. What seemed at first to be a sordid tale of adultery and betrayal was transformed by the new discoveries into an Appalachian Wuthering Heights. Tom Dula and Ann Melton had a profound romance spoiled by the machinations of their servant, Pauline Foster.

Rash, Ron. Serena. New York, New York: Ecco/HarperCollins, 2008.
A chilling gothic tale of greed, corruption, and revenge set against the backdrop of 1930’s wilderness and America’s burgeoning environmental movement.

Smith, Lee. Oral History. New York, New York: Berkley, 2016.
Oral History is the story of the Cantrell family, a story that spans the better part of a century. The Cantrells are a mountain family who inhabit the hills and environs of Hoot Owl Holler, Jennifer, a citified descendant of the Cantrells, arrives to record an ‘oral history’ of her family for a college course, and all the old stories unscroll.

Still, James. River of Earth. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1978 (first published in 1940).
First published in 1940, James Still's masterful novel has become a classic. It is the story, seen through the eyes of a boy, of three years in the life of his family and their kin. He sees his parents pulled between the meager farm with its sense of independence and the mining camp with its uncertain promise of material prosperity. In his world privation, violence, and death are part of everyday life, accepted and endured. Yet it is a world of dignity, love, and humor, of natural beauty which Still evokes in sharp, poetic images. No writer has caught more effectively the vividness of mountain speech or shown more honestly the trials and joys of mountain life.

Handler, Daniel. Girls Standing On Lawns. New York, NY: Harry N. Abrams, 2014.
This is a collaboration between renowned artist and bestselling children’s book author Maira Kalman and New York Times bestselling writer Daniel Handler, better known as Lemony Snicket. This book contains 40 vintage photographs from the collection of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, more than a dozen original paintings by Kalman inspired by the photographs, and brief, lyrical texts by Handler, offering a meditation on memories, childhood, nostalgia, home, family, and the act of seeing.

Jordan, Sandra and Jan Greenberg. Meet Cindy Sherman. Artist, Photographer, Chameleon. New York, NY: Roaring Brook Press, 2017.
Looking at the life of legendary photographer Cindy Sherman, Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan have created an unconventional biography, that much like Cindy Sherman's famous photographs, has something a little more meaningful under the surface. Infusing the narrative with Sherman's photographs, as well as children's first impressions of the photographs, this is a biography that goes beyond birth, middle age, and later life. It's a look at how we look at art.

Meyer, Carolyn. Girl With A Camera: Margaret Bourke-White, Photographer.New York: Calkins Creek, distributed by Random House, 2017.
Tells the story of how Margaret spent her early years observing the natural world before mastering the art of photography and became the first female war photojournalist in World War II.

Meyerowitz, Joel.Seeing Things: A Kid’s Guide to Looking at Photographs. New York, NY: Aperture, 2016.
Seeing Things is a wonderful introduction to photography that asks how photographers transform ordinary things into meaningful moments.

Proujansky, Alice. Go Photo! An Activity Book for Kids. New York, NY: Aperture; Act edition, 2016.
Go Photo! features 25 hands-on and creative activities inspired by photography. Aimed at children between eight and twelve years old, this playful and fun collection of projects encourages young readers to experiment with their imaginations, get messy with materials and engage with the world in new and exciting ways.

Weatherford, Carole Boston.Dorothea Lange: The Photographer Who Found the Faces of the Depression. Park Ridge, IL: Albert Whitman & Company, 2017.
"Before she raised her lens to take her most iconic photo, Dorothea Lange took photos of the downtrodden from bankers in once-fine suits waiting in breadlines, to former slaves, to the homeless sleeping on sidewalks. A case of polio had left her with a limp and sympathetic to those less fortunate. Traveling across the United States, documenting with her camera and her fieldbook those most affected by the stock market crash, she found the face of the Great Depression. In this picture book biography, Carole Boston Weatherford with her lyrical prose captures the spirit of the influential photographer. "

Daly, Niki. Bettina Valentino and the Picasso Club. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009.
A controversial new teacher at Bayside Preparatory School introduces the exciting world of art to aspiring artist Bettina Valentino and her fifth-grade classmates, encouraging them to see everyday life in a different way.

Gipe, Robert. Trampoline. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2015.
Dawn Jewell is fifteen. She is restless, curious, and wry. She listens to Black Flag, speaks her mind, and joins her grandmother’s fight against mountaintop removal mining almost in spite of herself. “I write by ear,” says Robert Gipe, and Dawn’s voice is the essence of his debut novel, Trampoline. She lives in eastern Kentucky with her addict mother and her Mamaw, whose stance against the coal companies has earned her the community’s ire. Jagged and honest, Trampoline is a powerful portrait of a place struggling with the economic and social forces that threaten and define it. Inspired by oral tradition and punctuated by Gipe’s raw and whimsical drawings, it is above all about its heroine, Dawn, as she decides whether to save a mountain or save herself; be ruled by love or ruled by anger; remain in the land of her birth or run for her life.

Gipe, Robert. Weedeater. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2018.
Weedeater  is a contemporary story of love and loss told by a pair of eastern Kentucky mountaineers: Gene, the lovelorn landscaper who bears witness to the misadventures of a family entangled in drugs, artmaking, and politics, a family beset by both environmental and self-destruction; and Dawn Jewell, a young mother searching—for lost family members, lost youth, lost community, and lost heart.
Picking up six years after the end of Robert Gipe’s acclaimed first novel, Trampoline, in Weedeater, the reader finds Canard County living through the last hurrah of the coal industry and the most turbulent and deadly phase of the community’s battle with opioid abuse. The events Gipe chronicles are frantic. They are told through a voice by turns taciturn and angry, yet also balanced with humor and stoic grace. Weedeater is a story about how we put our lives back together when we lose the things we thought we couldn’t bear losing, how we find new purpose in what we thought were scraps and trash caught in the weeds.

Foley, Jessie Ann. Sorry For Your Loss.New York, NY: Harper Teen, An Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2019.
The only person who ever made Pup Flanagan think he could be more than average was his older brother Patrick. But that was before Patrick died suddenly, leaving Pup with a family who won’t talk about it and acquaintances who just keep saying, “sorry for your loss.” When Pup excels at a photography assignment he thought he’d bomb, things start to come into focus. His dream girl shows her true colors. An unexpected friend exposes Pup to a whole new world, right under his nose.

Polacco, Patricia.The Art of Miss Chew. New York, NY: G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers, 2012.
After spending the summer with her artist grandmother, Trisha knows she wants to be an artist, too. She’s thrilled when her sketches get her into Miss Chew’s special art class at the high school. A substitute teacher tells her she’s wasting time on art when she should be studying – but fortunately, this is one battle that Miss Chew and Trisha are up for! This true story shows just how important a teacher can be in a child’s life – and celebrates the power of art itself.

Still, James. An Appalachian Mother Goose. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1998.
Who hasn't heard of Jack Sprat, Little Boy Blue, and Peter the pumpkin eater? These colorful characters from the Mother Goose rhymes have been a staple of children's literature for the last two hundred years. James Still, long known for his ability to bring the rhythmic and evocative language of the Appalachian region onto the page, now brings fresh life to these rhymes. This new Mother Goose introduces readers to the delights of gooseberry pie, the festivities of Jockey Day, and the dangers of witch-broom. Who knew that the man in the moon was really on his way to Hazard, Kentucky, or that a person "has only to bathe in honey dew" to avoid getting freckles?

Still, James. Jack and the Wonder Beans. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1996 (first published in 1977).
Still's delightful Appalachian retelling of "Jack and the Beanstalk," with illustrations by Margot Tomes, was the New York Times Book Review Judges' Choice for Best Illustrated Children's Book when it first appeared in 1977. This reprint makes available an Appalachian rendition of a beloved children's classic to a new generation of readers.

Ylvisaker, Anne. The Luck of the Buttons. Somerville, MA: Candlewick Press, 2011.
In Iowa circa 1929, spunky twelve-year-old Tugs vows to turn her family’s luck around, with the help of a Brownie camera and a small-town mystery.

Berry, Wendell. Openings. San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace & Company,1968.
In Openings Wendell Berry speaks as a citizen, farmer, husband, and father and as a man deeply concerned about the state of the nation. He writes both to celebrate the natural world and to warn of the destruction we inflict on it. He writes about our responsibilities to ourselves and to one another and about America's misuses of power. He writes, in poems that are tender and passionate, of love for his wife and of the pleasures and anxieties of parenthood. In a highly acclaimed extended sequence entitled Window Poems he weaves together all of his dominant themes.

hooks, bell. Appalachian Elegy: Poetry and Place. Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 2012.
Author, activist, feminist, teacher, and artist bell hooks is celebrated as one of the nation's leading intellectuals. Born in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, hooks drew her unique pseudonym from the name of her grandmother, an intelligent and strong-willed African American woman who inspired her to stand up against a dominating and repressive society. Her poetry, novels, memoirs, and children's books reflect her Appalachian upbringing and feature her struggles with racially integrated schools and unwelcome authority figures. One of Utne Reader's "100 Visionaries Who Can Change Your Life," hooks has won wide acclaim from critics and readers alike.

Manning, Maurice. One Man's Dark. Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 2017.
One Man’s Dark, the sixth collection from Pulitzer finalist Maurice Manning, epitomizes the storytelling tradition of his native rural South in poems rich with mythology and lyric beauty. In vivid detail that draws as readily from dreams as from waking life, Manning honors what is rapidly vanishing: the people, landscapes, and things of a world making way for an uncertain and less spiritual future. Like songs sung from a warm porch, these revelatory poems chronicle not only the narratives that have gathered and bound a community over time but also the lyrics that have questioned it, too, in gorgeously intimate and personal terms.

Walker, Frank X. Affrilachia. Lexington, KY: Old Cove Press, 2000.
Frank X Walker’s path breaking book of poems Affrilachia is a classic of Appalachian and African-American literature. Walker created the word “Affrilachia” to help make visible the experience of African-Americans living in the rural and Appalachian South. The book is widely used in classrooms and is one of the foundational works of the Affrilachian Poets, a community of writers offering fresh ways to think about diversity in the Appalachian region and beyond.

Whiteley, Opal. The Story of Opal. New York, NY: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1920.
Gary Crase, a former photography student featured in Portraits and Dreams, recalls his encounter with The Story of Opal - Whiteley’s curious childhood diary. Crase says to Ewald, “One time you brought a book in. And it was a poem. And I had never heard poetry before. And I can remember you reading this poetry and being utterly amazed.”