Marian Anderson’s life strongly impacted the world of singing, politics, and racial equality in the twentieth century.  Both Pam Muñoz Ryan in When Marian Sang and Russell Freedman in The Voice that Challenged a Nation have presented her life in different but equally powerful ways.  Freedman, as is his pattern, draws upon a number of first-hand documents, including photographs, letters, newspaper headlines and stories, performance programs, and interviews.  His use of these documents is a model for young readers to do the same.  When Freedman was awarded the Robert F. Sibert medal for The Voice that Challenged a Nation, Kathleen Isaacs recognized that “with profound respect for his subject and his reader’s intelligence” he “has elegantly constructed a compelling narrative enhanced by exemplary documentation and powerful, well-chosen photographs.”  This is an excellent description of first-hand documented biography. 

The first photograph in Freedman’s book is of Anderson in 1898 at age one, with no hint that this was a person who would perform before royalty in Europe and at the U.S. White House for Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.  He describes the world in which she grew up, one that was segregated and that required she use separate facilities at train stations and provided few hotel possibilities.  But she also accomplished many firsts.  She was “the first black concert artist to record Negro spirituals for a major American recording company, the Victor Talking Machine Company.”  She was the “first black vocalist to appear as a soloist with the Philharmonic Society at Philadelphia’s prestigious Academy of Music.”  And she was the first black artist to sing at the Metropolitan Opera.  The sense of history attached to Marian Anderson is a model for young readers to understand the need to research the person or event they would place in a story.

Marian Anderson’s famous recital at the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday 1939, to an audience of 75,000, followed much furor after the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to rent Constitution Hall for this purpose.   In the process, Eleanor Roosevelt very publicly resigned from the DAR in her nationally syndicated newspaper column, and worked with her husband to ensure that Marian would sing publicly to a large and integrated crowd.  Franklin Roosevelt is quoted as stating, “I don’t care if she sings from the top of the Washington Monument, as long as she sings.”  This is an important event and one about which many resources exist.

Pam Muñoz Ryan and Brian Selznick in When Marian Sang also present the life of Marian Anderson for younger readers in a unique way that matches text and illustrations to her life.  Playing on Anderson’s role as a vocal performer, the book’s opening pages appear to be a musical program in which Scholastic Press presents, for its “Season of Two Thousand and Two” this story of the “True Recital” of Marian Anderson, with the “Libretto” or story by Pam Muñoz Ryan and the staging or decorations by Brian Selznick.  As the story is told, words from many of the songs so often associated with Anderson are printed in the text. 

Ryan also describes at length Anderson’s recital at the Lincoln Memorial, and Selznick’s illustrations show very clearly in individual faces the diversity present in her audience on that special day.  This has clearly been a presentation of the “True Recital” of Marian Anderson’s entire life—one that brought social and political change as well as much beauty to the world.  Because this is a book for younger readers does not mean that it was not based on serious research and reliance on authentic texts.  In the “Encore” or Afterward of the book, the reader is directed to some of these texts.  At http://www.nara.gov/exhall/originals/eleanor.html is Eleanor Roosevelt’s actual letter of resignation from the DAR.  The Marian Anderson Historical Society’s website, which provides much factual information about her life can be found at http://www.mariananderson.org.  The University of Pennsylvania Library maintains a virtual exhibition about Marian Anderson at http://www.library.upenn.edu/special/gallery/anderson.org.  Both author and illustrator explain their very personal reasons for wanting to create this book, and they include notable dates in Anderson’s life and provide a “Selected Discography” as did Russell Freedman.  Live Oak Media has released a CD of When Marian Sang on which Gail Nelson reads the text and sings some of the songs made famous by Anderson, the text of which are included in the book as part of the “true recital.”