There are many who believe that the straightest path to African-American authenticity results from selecting artists and writers who come from the culture they're representing. Being outside the culture means you're at least one step removed and research can't always substitute for a knowing that comes from growing up Black.

In the last year there has been an explosion of African-American books illustrated or written by people within the culture. To inspire the creation of authentic material, HarperCollins and ScottForesman co-sponsor The Center for Multicultural Children's Literature, a mentoring service for talented multicultural writers and illustrators seeking to be published in this field. For more information about awards and guidelines, you can write: The Center for Multicultural Children's Literature, % HarperCollins Children's Books, 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022.

Finally there are board books written by and featuring African-American babies! Companion books Goodnight Baby and Goodmorning Baby by Cheryl Willis Hudson describe in rhyme the gearing up and the winding day of an exuberant toddler. Ages 0-3 (Scholastic, $5.95)

Soft watercolors by Jan Gilchrist accent the gentle words of Eloise Greenfield in four board books: My Doll, Keishia; Daddy and I...; I Make Music; Big Friend, Little Friend. Ages 0-3. (all from Black Butterfly, $5.95)

The two collaborate on a lyrical, sensitive story for older children, First Pink Light. The tale tells of a young boy welcoming his father back home to his loving family. Ages 3-7. (Black Butterfly, $13.95)

Children can make their own sounds with Shake It To the One That You Love the Best, a Play-a-Tune book. The songbook has keys that small fingers can tink around on and adult fingers can play accompaniment to nine songs from Black musical traditions. Ages 0-8 ( JTG, $12.95)

Ann Marie Linden celebrates her Barbados childhood and a very special relationship in One Smiling Grandma: A Caribbean Counting Book. The rhythmic, rhyming text is as soothing as a Calypso melody. Ages 2-5. (Dial, $15.00)

Francine Haskins' Things I like About Grandma tells of cozy times like storytelling and quilting and bustling times like going to the hairdresser to watch Grandma's hair being pressed and curled amidst the music of laughter, gossip, and gospel. Ages 3-7. (Children's Book Press, $13.95)

Sheron Williams' And in the Beginning is inspired by her storytelling grandmother. Clearly, Williams inherited her grandmother's gift. Her eloquent introduction is made up of provocative images that help readers see this "toffee beige, tall and thin pecan tree" of a woman who is a source of unending streams of stories. Once she invokes her grandmother and the ritualistic admonishment for pure story telling, Williams enriches readers with a re-telling of the creation of Kwanza, Swahili for "the first one". Introduction and story parallel each other with a thread of unconditional love. There's also an imbedded message of self-love, pride, beauty and the beloved quality of Kwanza and all his progeny. Ages 5 and up. (Atheneum, $13.95)

Children everywhere have fallen in love with Faith Ringgold's Cassie Louise Lightfoot , the heroine of the Caldecott award-winning Tar Beach. (Crown, $15.00). Cassie returns in another high-flying, historically enlightening adventure in Aunt Harriet's Underground Railroad in the Sky. Harriet experiences traveling the Underground Railroad to Canada and her travels are a blur of people and places, songs and sounds, frights and hungers, kindnesses and the whisper of Aunt Harriet's voice urging her on to freedom. There is much that dimensionalizes this book. ..the beautiful primitive paintings, the way history and biography dart in and out of the story, the adventuring of Cassie, and the poetic prose which Ringgold uses to quilt all these pieces together. Ages 6 and up. (Crown, $15.00)

A first book by Deborah Hopkinson, Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt, commemorates an African-American girl's making of a freedom quilt during the time of the Underground Railroad. Powerful illustrations by James Ransome punctuate this compelling story. Ages 5 and up. (Knopf, $15.00)

There are several non-fiction Kwanzaa books on the market, but Imani's Gift at Kwanzaa is the first book to surround this African-American tradition with true story. Denise Burden-Patman tells the story of Imani, gifted with the name of the seventh Kwanzaa principle meaning "having faith". With the support of her grandmother, M'dear, and Kwanzaa, Imani is able to to welcome a difficult friend into the happiness of celebration and friendship. Warm, glowing illustrations by Floyd Cooper show symbols and a family who lives Kwanzaa's principles. Ages 4-8. (Simon and Schuster, $4.95)

The same author tells of a young girl adjusting to a move from Trinidad to New York and finding a new way to celebrate Carnival. Ages 4-8 (Simon and Schuster, $4.95)

Consistent contributors to African-American children's books offer stunning collections. Ashley Bryan's Sing To The Sun, is a collection of poems offering diversity of moods, subjects, and settings. All ages. (HarperCollins, $15.00)

Virginia Hamilton traces the history of slavery and the Underground Railroad in Many Thousand Gone with emotive illustrations by the Dillons. (Knopf, $16.00)

Patricia McKissack's The Dark Thirty: Southern Tales of the Supernatural, are ghosts stories whose true haunting comes from painful African-American experiences. Ages 8 and up. (Knopf, $15.00)

There are voids in the European accounting of American life, but now African-American voices come forth to correct history. Walter Dean Myers, pens Now Is Your Time! : The African-American Struggle for Freedom through events, people, photographs, documents, and even his personal history. His foreword and afterward are stirring statements of belief. Ages 10 and up. (HarperCollins, $10.95)

Coretta Scott King award-winning author, Mildred Pitts Walter, relates stories, events, policy, politics and people of the1960's in her Mississippi Challenge (Ages 12 and up; Bradbury, $18.95)

James Haskins views history from a different perspective in Black Music in America: A History Through Its People (Ages 12 and up; HarperCollins, $6.95)

Jamaican-born writer James Berry writes a historically based novella, Ajeemah and His Son. In 1807, the wealthy, proud, joker Ajeemah accompanies his expectant son Atu to the home of his bride-to-be to offer a dowry. Ajeemah has hidden gold in his sandals to trick to surprise the bride's family. It is Ajeemah and Atu who are surprised by slave traders. And after that it is the reader who is surprised. Surprised that Berry can pack so much history and feeling into only 83 pages, surprised that the dreams and hopes of two men can be so tragically chattered, surprised that the spare text holds so much richness, and continually surprised by the event's of Berry's story and the way he tells it. Ages 11 and up. (HarperCollins, $13.00)

Joyce Carol Thomas re-works the Cinderella story in When the Nightingale Sings. The setting changes to the swamps of the south, the quest is transformed to finding a lead gospel singer and Cinderella is the orphaned, mistreated Marigold who has the voice of a nightingale. There's a delight not only in seeing the path the variation takes, but in the way Thomas plays with words, themes and sounds to deepen her story. Ages 12 and up. (HarperCollins, $14.00)