Dinner at Aunt Connie's House BY Faith Ringgold

This is a story about a young girl named Melody who goes to her aunt Connie’s house every summer for dinner and a special showing of her aunt’s artwork. Melody meets Aunt Connie’s adopted son Lonnie and they play hide and seek, in the house, before dinner. While playing hide and seek, they find Aunt Connie’s portraits of African American Women who have made great contributions to American History. The portraits talk to Melody and Lonnie; they tell both of them about their lives and how they contributed to American History. This book is great because it gives a brief description of these women and you can see how they look. This good contains a lot of valuable information that used in many different ways in the classroom.

This book can be utilized in the classroom by having students draw their own self portraits and write their own description of themselves. They can write about what contributions they made. This book could also be used as a starting point for research papers. Students could pick one woman they want to learn more about and they can research and make a presentation to the class. The students could even do a skit and act like the women they are researching. They could even act a dinner scene in which they students are portraying the women in this book. The students could also write something that they would want their portrait to say 50 years from now. How do they want to change the world? What do they want to be known for? The first woman to do… The first man to do… Being that the book was inspired by a quilt; the class can make a quilt out of their own portraits.

This book addresses all the stages of Social Justice Education.