Inspired by her painted story quilt of the same name, Faith Ringgold’s debut children’s book, Tar Beach, centers on a girl who yearns to be free to go wherever she wants for the rest of her life. One night, up on “tar beach” – the rooftop of her family’s Harlem apartment building – her dream comes true when the stars lift her up and she flies over the city. Published by Crown in 1991, Tar Beach won the Coretta Scott King Award for illustration and was named a Caldecott Honor Book. On May 10, Knopf released a 25th-anniversary edition of the book, as well as a new picture book by Ringgold, We Came to America, a celebration of this country’s multicultural heritage.

Born in Harlem in 1930, Ringgold received a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in art education from the City College of New York and taught art in New York City Public Schools before becoming a professional artist. In the 1960s, Ringgold created oil paintings and posters whose messages fervently endorsed the civil rights movement. Later, she expanded her artistic repertoire to include masks based on African tribal costume, fabric dolls and life-size figures, sculpture, and, famously, the narrative quilts that opened the door to her publishing career.

In 1989, Andrea Cascardi, then executive editor at Crown, tracked down Ringgold through her gallery after seeing, on a colleague’s office wall, a poster for an upcoming art exhibition featuring a picture of the artist’s Tar Beach quilt. (That work, which is part of Ringgold’s Woman on the Bridge quilt series, now hangs in Manhattan’s Guggenheim Museum.)

When Cascardi and art director John Grandits met with Ringgold to ask if she’d consider creating a picture book based on her story quilt, the author recalled, “I said, ‘Well, okay – actually, I’d love to do it!’ The Tar Beach quilt came from a memory from my childhood: going with my family up to the roof of our building, where you can see the George Washington Bridge. I find bridges so compelling and so wonderful.”

Consistently in print for 25 years, Tar Beach is a mainstay of the Random House Children’s Books backlist, observed Knopf associate publishing director Melanie Cecka Nolan. “Without doubt, Tar Beach is one of our most treasured picture books,” she said. “It represents Faith’s realism and idealism in equal capacities. I think of her as a chronicler of the African-American experience, and in this book she does it in a beautiful and relevant way. Tar Beach is a very important contribution to children’s literature, as well as a showcase of Faith’s gorgeous mixed-media art. To me, it epitomizes what a children’s book should be.”

Also Celebrating the New

A quarter-century after the release of Ringgold’s debut title, her 18th children’s book, We Came to America, takes its place on children’s shelves shelf alongside Tar Beach – after a long gestation period. This ode to the unique gifts and contributions of those who arrived on these shores from around the globe evolved from a book by Ringgold that was acquired in 1996 by Simon Boughton, then at the editorial helm of Crown and Knopf.

“The original manuscript was a lengthy compilation of cultural folktales, and since no one knew quite what to do with it, it lay dormant in a drawer for many years,” Nolan explained. “When I arrived at Knopf in 2012, I spent some time with the stories, trying to peel back layers to discover what the book was meant to be.”

The editor found her answer when she came across a potential gem embedded in one of the folktales. “It was a poem – just three stanzas long – but I kept coming back to it,” Nolan recalled. “It addressed the notion of passing stories down, and what our ancestors contributed to our country, and it already had a wonderful, natural cadence to it. I asked Faith if she would consider making the poem the seed of the book – and expand on it.”

Though Ringgold originally balked at the suggestion of significantly paring down her original manuscript, she appreciated Nolan’s observation that reworking the text would make the book accessible to a wider span of ages. “I felt as though the text would then work equally well for very young children and for older children,” Nolan said. “For older kids, it could open up conversations on a deeper level – about immigration and where their own and their friends’ ancestors came from, and what they contributed to America. And Faith agreed.”

Ringgold expressed hope that We Came to America will help young readers celebrate the rich and diverse contributions that immigrants to America have made over the centuries. “Each group of people who’ve come to this country brought something exciting – through their music, their dance, their art, and their literature,” she said. “And what all of these people brought has become part of our culture – and that’s why America is such an exciting place today.”

This story has been updated to reflect new information.

Tar Beach: 25th Anniversary Edition by Faith Ringgold. Knopf, $17.99 May 978-0-517-58030-1

We Came to America by Faith Ringgold. Knopf, $17.99 May 978-0-517-70947-4