Skip to main content

Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice

By

Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice
by Phillip Hoose
New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2009. 144 pgs. Biography.


Phillip Hoose's award-winning biography acquaints readers young and old with a little-known heroine of the Civil Rights Movement. Claudette Colvin was fifteen years old when she had totally had it with the Montgomery, Alabama, bus system which required her to relinquish her seat to a white person when asked, even if there were other seats available in the bus. When she refused to move she was arrested by the transit police and did jail time. Although local civil rights' leaders commended her actions and arranged representation for her at her trial, she was deemed too young and too fractious to be the public face of what would become the Montgomery Bus Boycott. (That face would, sometime later, belong to Rosa Parks.) Later, as an unwed, pregnant teenager, Colvin's stock would sink even lower, but her courage in facing the initial arrest, and her willingness to testify against those who had wronged her--and all black citizens--in Federal Court are an exemplary if little-known part of the civil rights movement in America. Part exposition and part first-person narrative, Hoose's book is a masterful retelling of an important story. One violent and vulgar racial slur make this a book for older children or one that parents may want to read with their children. Recipient of a 2010 Newbery Honor award and a Sibert honor for children's informational book.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Funny Farm by Mark Teague 2009

By Anonymous
There are things I liked about Mark Teague's newest book, Funny Farm , and things I didn't like. Where should I start? I'll do the "didn'ts" first. The illustrations show animals personified. Well, some of the animals are. The main characters, Edward, and his farm family relatives, all dogs, are humanized. They stand upright, do farm chores, eat at a table, wear clothes, knit (yes, with paws) and sleep in beds. Most everybody else on and around the farm, who are also animals, act like animals. They are outside, roll in mud, live in the barn, and require care from their owners. It struck me the most on the page spread where there are pigs playing in puddle in the rain and Edward, a black and white boxer, watches from inside the house. I thought "You're a dog! Go play with them!" But, alas, he can't, seeing as how he goes through his entire visit to the farm wearing a suit and red bow tie. Another picture that bothered me was the maple syrup pa...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Girl Who Could Fly by Victoria Forester 2008

By Anonymous
J Fiction 328 pages I almost didn't finish this book. I got to Chapter 4, and was just about ready to quit (a kind of slow story about a girl, name of Piper McCloud, who discovers she can fly, parents freak out, she becomes a social outcast, yadda, yadda) but suddenly, right there in Chapter 4, the story takes a sharp turn and becomes really interesting . Piper finds herself in the company of others like her, but not "fliers", and under the care and authority of Dr. Hellion. I won't even tell you any more. Read this book. Forester does a great job of keeping you wondering who's the good guy and who's the bad? Piper is a likeable, strong, endearing character that girl readers will enjoy. But don't NOT give it to boys! The main male character is an extremely intelligent young man who is one of the ones you wonder about . . . good or bad? This is a good one, well worth your time.
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: The Factory

By
The Factory By Catherine Egan New York, NY : Scholastic Inc., 2025. Fiction. 306 pages.  Thirteen-year-old Asher Doyle has been invited to join the Factory, a secretive research facility in the desert which ostensibly extracts renewable energy from the electromagnetic fields of its young recruits. But Asher soon realizes something sinister is going on. Kids are getting sick. The adults who run the Factory seem to be keeping secrets. And the extraction process is not only painful and exhausting, but existentially troubling. Asher makes a handful of new friends who help him with an investigation that turns into a resistance, which turns into...a cliffhanger! The Factory is a page-turning sci-fi with multidimensional characters, an intriguing plot, and refreshingly straight-forward writing. Egan weaves in detail about climate crises and social unrest, making the story's dystopian setting feel rich and plausible. With its sophisticated themes and accessible storytelling, I would recomm...
Post a Comment
Read more