Pigskins to Paintbrushes: The Story of Football-Playing Artist Ernie Barnes

Ernie Barnes (1938–2009) is different from the kids in his community: “A boy who didn’t play sports? Who loved art, played the trombone, and enjoyed reading poetry?” In the Bottom, the African American neighborhood where Barnes lived in segregated Durham, N.C., expectations center on sports: “Play football—that’s what real boys do.” Barnes does play, eventually going pro, but maintains his art practice, parlaying his skill into becoming the official artist of the American Football League. Barnes’s two pursuits never quite cohere in this picture book, and the cheery mixed-media illustrations don’t evoke Barnes’s artistic aesthetic, adding to the sense that something essential is missing from this telling. But Tate’s tale illuminates the structural and social obstacles Barnes faced—from intense peer pressure to the adult Barnes’s longed-for first trip to an art museum, where he was told “your people don’t express themselves this way”—and clearly highlights the idea that there need be no division of interests between arts and sports. An afterword includes additional biographical information. Ages 6–10. (Aug.)