Review by Booklist Review
Gr. 2^-4. Without dumbing down, the famous civil rights activist has simplified her YA autobiography, Rosa Parks: My Story (1991), and made it accessible to beginning readers as a Dial Easy-to-Read Book. Like the original title, this one is cowritten by Jim Haskins, and the style is clear and direct, beginning with the drama of her arrest for refusing to give up her seat to a white man on the bus. Parks shows that her personal role was part of a wider political struggle, and she relates the bus boycott to the civil rights movement and to her continuing fight against racism. The design is spacious, with big type, and Clay's paintings, some of them based on famous photographs, capture the segregation scene and the fight to end it. The first-person voice gives weight to Parks' final message: "I hope that children today will . . . learn to respect one another no matter what color they are." --Hazel Rochman
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Thoughtfully targeting their audience, Parks and Haskins reshape and simplify the events they recounted in Rosa Parks: My Story, making this Easy-to-Read book just that. Incorporating age-appropriate definitions of such concepts as segregation and boycotts, Parks's first-person account laces together brief, straightforward sentences that pack powerful messages: "There was no school bus for us," she writes, describing her childhood. "Sometimes when we walked to school, the bus would go by, carrying the white children. They would laugh at us and throw trash out the window. There was no way to stop them." The book's opening sequence, an account of Parks's pivotal arrest on a Montgomery bus, use dialogue to give the narrative an immediacy and urgency ("Why do you push us black people around?" Parks boldly asks the arresting officer); this is, curiously, the only chapter in which the authors use this technique. Clay's (The House in the Sky) paintings, almost one per page, vary from overdramatized tableaux to subtle reinterpretations of historical photographs. These latter illustrations are particularly effective in bolstering the book's inspiring portrayal of a major civil-rights activist. Ages 4-8. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 1-3This brief autobiography introduces readers to Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott. The subjects of segregation in the South and Parks's experience when she refused to give up her seat set a serious and later, hopeful mood. Told in the first person, the text is powerful, accessible to beginning readers, and succinctly covers the events surrounding the boycott. Best of all, Parks ends on a positive note with the desire that children will learn respect, not hate. A few lines of dialogue, several dates, and the mention of locations put the story in perspective. Clay's watercolor paintings enhance the text. Other good books appropriate for the same age group include David Adler's A Picture Book of Rosa Parks (Holiday, 1993) and Eloise Greenfield's Rosa Parks (HarperCollins, 1995).Mary M. Hopf, Los Angeles Public Library (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
I1="BLANK" I2="BLANKFleischman's innovative short novel is the story of an urban garden started by a child and nurtured by people of all ages and ethnic backgrounds. Each of the thirteen chapters is narrated by a different character, allowing the reader to watch as a community develops out of disconnected lives and previous suspicions. Although the total effect of the brief chapters is slightly superficial, some of the individual narratives are moving. The opening chapter about nine-year-old Kim, a Vietnamese immigrant, is a vivid portrait of a child who longs for the approval of her deceased father. The novel is didactic in purpose-folks of all ages, economic backgrounds, and ethnicities put aside their differences to create a beautiful, rich harvest-but effective in execution. From HORN BOOK, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
I Am Rosa Parks ($12.99; PLB $12.89; Feb. 1997; 48 pp.; 0- 8037-1206-5; PLB 0-8037-1207-3): In the Easy-To-Read series, Parks and Haskins mold for a younger readership the material in their acclaimed Rosa Parks (1992). Unlike most books in the series, this one will require adult prompting for difficult words and ideas, although the language is smoothly simple in most places. The workmanlike black-and-white illustrations complement the story of a quietly courageous heroine. (Autobiography. 5-9)
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