Ellington Was Not a Street

Based on the poet Ntozake Shange's 2004 Parents' Choice Gold award-winning picture book remembrance, illustrated by Kadir Nelson, the iconographic-animated Ellington Was Not a Street recalls the author's childhood when many well-known African-American figures in politics, the arts, and sports, visited her family home, including Duke Ellington, Paul Robson, W.E.B. DuBois, and Dizzy Gillespie. Although full of wonderfully poetic phrases (“politics as necessary as collards”), Shange's living-room-group-portrait come to life is unlikely to resonate with younger viewers who will have no context for remarks such as “Dizzy's hair was not always gray.” In addition, the suggestion that these are all “men who changed the world” is somewhat overstated (DuBois, Robson, and even Gillespie, yes—but welterweight fighter Virgil Akins or Orioles' crooner Sonny Till?). Young viewers—not to mention many adults—will have to wait until after the film for a profile of each of the men elliptically referred to here. Ultimately, this is a kind of narrative-less (though admittedly poetic and beautifully illustrated) name-dropping roll call that tells us little about the men highlighted (until the tacked-on who's who) and even less about the author. An optional purchase. Aud: E, I, P. (R. Pitman)