Ewa Klęczaj-Siara Protecting the Spirit of the American South: Representations of New Orleans Culture in Contemporary Children’s Picture Books Abstract: This article explores selected aspects of southern culture as presented in contemporary children’s picture books. It analyzes children’s stories which celebrate New Orleans’ residents and their traditions. Unlike many scholars who point to the end of the New Orleans spirit due to recent economic and demographic changes, children’s authors perceive the culture as a resource which regenerates the city. By means of writing for children they keep the city’s distinct black culture from disappearing. The aim of this article is to examine to what extent the spirit of the South has survived in the minds of contemporary authors and artists addressing young generations of readers. It discusses the presence of such cultural elements as jazz music, body movement and the ritual of parading in selected children’s picture books set in New Orleans. Among others, it analyzes such titles as Freedom in Congo Square (2016) by C. Weatherford, and Trombone Shortly (2015) and The 5 O’ Clock Band (2018) by Troy Andrews. The article focuses on the interaction between the verbal and the visual elements of the books, and the ways they convey the meaning of the stories. Keywords: New Orleans, jazz, parading, Hurricane Katrina, children’s literature, picture books African American children’s literature has always been marked with political struggle and resistance. Black authors regularly respond to social and political transformations as well as natural disasters which strike black neighborhoods. In many books they focus on the culture that binds the people and gives them a sense of identity in the time of crisis. This is what happened in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina of 2005. While scholars and journalists stress the fact that the disaster threatened the cultural existence of New Orleans, causing mass migration of residents to other parts of the country, children’s authors represent the opposite view, claiming that culture kept the people together and brought some of them back to the city. By means of simple stories and the accompanying illustrations, they emphasize the transformative force of the storm, thus raising an important point in the post-Katrina conversation about New Orleans. To counter inadequate accounts of the place, children’s authors argue that “the storm is part of a much longer history of people surviving and celebrating under difcult conditions” (Watts and Porter xv). Culture has always been considered a signifcant asset of the city, especially if created by the local people. Recently, however, many scholars fail to mention the fact that New Orleans’ root culture cannot be preserved without its people. This point, frequently overshadowed in the post-Katrina debate, is the main argument of many children’s books published after the hurricane. New Orleans Culture Apart from New York’s Harlem, New Orleans, perceived by many to be the most cosmopolitan southern city, is one of the most popular settings of contemporary