This beautifully illustrated picture book of Langston Hughes’s “Dream Variations” (a poem published in 1926) explores the speaker’s vision of a society without racism, discrimination, segregation, and racial prejudice. Dancing through the ‘white day‘, representing dominant white society, and ‘flinging his arms widely‘ the speaker, a young African-American boy dreaming of equality, freedom and ease, hopes for a better future to come, when ‘the white day is done‘.

The poem is suitable for a cross-curricular project on racism and inequality – also, interdisciplinary teaching with the subjects of History, Ethics, and Social Science is possible.

Picture book/Poem · United States · 1926