Children's Book Review - She is Too Fond of Books

Back-of-the-book blurb: Paula Young Shelton, daughter of Civil Rights activist Andrew Young, brings a child?s unique perspective to an important chapter in America?s history. Paula grew up in the deep south, in a world where whites had and blacks did not. With an activist father and a community of leaders surrounding her, including Uncle Martin (Martin Luther King), Paula watched and listened to the struggles, eventually joining with her family?and thousands of others?in the historic march from Selma to Montgomery.

She Is Too Fond of Books? review: Wow! ?I read The Help last week (I know, I know, the last person in the Western world to read it!), and my head is still reeling from the way that novel portrayed a personal story of the Civil Rights movement ? very realistic. ?Yesterday my son picked this picture book off the shelf stack for bedtime reading, and I thought, how perfect, this bring that story down to his level.

Child of the Civil Rights Movement is written by Paula Young Shelton, a woman whose parents (Andrew Young and Jean Childs Young) were very involved in the Civil Rights movement. ?Although the young family had settled in New York, they were spurred to ?go help ? go home? when they saw television news about the Freedom Riders and the violence they faced:

So Mama and Daddy packed up
their three little girls -
Andrea, Lisa, and me -
and we went back to Georgia,
back to Jim Crow,
where whites could
but blacks could not.
Back to the heart of the civil rights movement.

She writes of her first ?sit-in,? and unplanned temper tantrum by a hungry four-year-old when the family is refused service at a restaurant that would serve only whites. ?She writes of being with the group as they set out to march in protest from Selma to Montgomery, and of her father?s frequent absences and arrests because of the work he did.

The family was close to many leaders of the fight for equality, ?the Civil Rights Family? she calls it. Young Paula addressed the adults ?uncle? and ?aunt? even though they weren?t related. ?She tells about planning meetings that were held at various homes, and eating dinner together. When the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed, she writes:

But even then I also knew
that we?d won just one battle
and there were many more to come.

And one day,
when Mama and Daddy were too tired to march,
too weary to carry us on their shoulders,
too exhausted to fight another battle,
the baton would pass to us
and we would march on -
children of the civil rights movement.

Paula Young Shelton writes of the Civil Rights movement as seen through the eyes of a child, while an appendix gives biographical information about Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph Abernathy, Randolph Blackwell, Dorothy Cotton, James Orange, and Hosea Williams, as well as suggestions for further reading.

The painted illustrations of Raul Col?n are muted (almost a sepia effect, although he used colors), yet show a great range of emotion. ?He used a stippled and combed technique; they?re unique and striking. ?The end pages are a simpler line drawing of marching legs and feet ? striking.

Child of the Civil Rights Movement is a must for children in any home, school, or public library. ?Although it?s a picture book, there?s a lot of text (in fact, the story is told in short chapters). I wasn?t sure my younger son would sit for it as a read-aloud, but he did (interrupting to ask, ?Mama, is this a real story?? When I told him that, yes, the author experienced these things when she was a little girl, he blinked and said, ?Well, those other people weren?t fair.? ? he got it!). ?The book can be enjoyed and used as a resource for children through Fourth or Fifth Grade.

Source: http://www.sheistoofondofbooks.com/2011/07/14/childrens-book-review-child-of-the-civil-rights-movement-by-paula-young-shelton/

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