Julius Lester has had a long and fruitful career in both children's and young adult literature. Since 1968, he has published over thirty books, two-thirds of which are for younger readers. A champion of individual liberty and responsibility, Lester is also a spokesman across racial lines. As a fiction writer, historian, and reteller of folktales, Lester has profoundly affected the field of children's literature. With his 1970 proclamation that African Americans "no longer (and never did) need whites to interpret our lives or our culture," Lester threw down the gauntlet to children's literature and what he viewed as a literary establishment out of touch with the times. "Whites can only give a white interpretation of blacks," Lester went on to write in an exchange of published letters with New York Times Book Review children's book editor George Woods. Such an interpretation, Lester felt, "tells us a lot about whites, but...