These tales are so tall they touch the sky From Caldecott Honor artist Christopher Myers and Zora Neale Hurston.

While traveling in the Gulf States in the 1930s, Zora Neale Hurston collected and recorded some real whoppers told by folks from all walks of life. Not dog ate my homework kind of lies, but tales so wild you didn't ever want to hear the truth. And now today's picture–book readers can enjoy these far–fetched fibs, with Caldecott Honor artist Christopher Myers's spirited adaption and bold, expressive collages.

I seen a man so short, he had to get up on a box to look over a grain of sand.

And the fastest?

I seen a man run so hard that he lost his feets.

Back in the day, there were liars who could lie so good, you didn't even want to know the truth. And we have Zora Neale Hurston to thank for collecting their stories. In lies, Caldecott Honor and Coretta Scott King Honor artist Christopher Myers has created expressive collages that are as bold and wild as the whoppers Hurston encountered on her travels in the Gulf States. Here's a visual treat that will tickle your funny bone.

In her award-winning autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road (1942), Zora Neale Hurston claimed to have been born in Eatonville, Florida, in 1901. She was, in fact, born in Notasulga, Alabama, on January 7, 1891, the fifth child of John Hurston (farmer, carpenter, and Baptist preacher) and Lucy Ann Potts (school teacher). The author of numerous books, including Their Eyes Were Watching God, Jonah's Gourd Vine, Mules and Men, and Moses, Man of the Mountain,Hurston had achieved fame and sparked controversy as a novelist, anthropologist, outspoken essayist, lecturer, and theatrical producer during her 69 years. Hurston's finest work of fiction appeared at a time when artistic and political statements — whether single sentences or book-length fictions — were peculiarly conflated. Many works of fiction were informed by purely political motives; political pronouncements frequently appeared in polished literary prose. Hurston's own political statements, relating to racial issues or addressing national politics, did not ingratiate her with her black male contemporaries. The end result was that Their Eyes Were Watching God went out of print not long after its first appearance and remained out of print for nearly 30 years.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., has been one among many to ask: "How could the recipient of two Guggenheims and the author of four novels, a dozen short stories, two musicals, two books on black mythology, dozens of essays, and a prize winning autobiography virtually 'disappear' from her readership for three full decades?"

That question remains unanswered. The fact remains that every one of Hurston's books went quickly out of print; and it was only through the determined efforts, in the 1970s, of Alice Walker, Robert Hemenway (Hurston's biographer), Toni Cade Bambara, and other writers and scholars that all of her books are now back in print and that she has taken her rightful place in the pantheon of American authors.

In 1973, Walker, distressed that Hurston's writings had been all but forgotten, found Hurston's grave in the Garden of Heavenly Rest and installed a gravemarker. "After loving and teaching her work for a number of years," Walker later reported, "I could not bear that she did not have a known grave." The gravemarker now bears the words that Walker had inscribed there:

ZORA NEALE HURSTON

GENIUS OF THE SOUTH

NOVELIST FOLKLORIST ANTHROPOLOGIST

(1891-1960)

In Brief

Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) was a novelist, folklorist, and anthropologist whose fictional and factual accounts of black heritage are unparalleled. She Is the author of many books, including Their Eyes Were Watching God, Dust Tracks on a Road, Tell My Horse, and Mules and Men.