The best walk-a-mile in my shoes books

This book is an oldie but a goodie. Set in 1963 and told through the point of view of nine-year-old Kenny, it tells the story of a black family from Flint, Michigan who travel to Birmingham because Kenny’s brother needs his Southern grandma to straighten him out. I grew up in the sixties and my father’s family lived in Flint, Michigan, so I immediately connected to the book. During their time in Birmingham, Kenny witnesses the aftermath of a bombing at a nearby church. The actual bombing death of the four girls at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Alabama during the Civil Rights protests is an indelible memory in my life. I wish there had been a book for me to read in my childhood to reassure me that a family’s love has the power and strength to withstand tragedy. 

Some of my favorite adult books are historical fiction set during WWII, so it’s a no-brainer I picked this middle-grade book to recommend. My grandma’s name was Ada, so from the start my heart broke for the main character who was treated horribly by her own mother. Despite that situation, I still worried when Ada and her brother Jamie were torn from the only home they knew to escape the bombing in London. I can’t imagine how they felt, forced to live with a stranger, especially since Ada didn’t believe anyone could truly care about her. And yet, Ada and Jamie triumph against all the odds stacked against them. I think it’s the resilience of the human spirit in this book, that brings so much hope to me. 

All of Linda Sue Park’s books are fantastic. She’s a master of imagery and character development and her writing is poetic. I’ve heard her speak at writing conferences and the amount of time she spends editing her books to make them perfect is amazing. In Prairie Lotus, Hanna and her father flee the racism and violence against Asians in California in 1800. But nowhere is safe for Hanna, even the Dakota Territories. It’s important to always remind ourselves of the harassment and murder of people of color that happened in our country so we can keep fighting to end it. 

What would it be like if I knew nothing about my past? And what would I do to try to find out about my birth parents? I love the internal emotional struggles the main character, Crow, faces in this book. She’s unable to connect emotionally with outsiders yet worries her adoptive parent will be angry she’s researching the clues she thinks lead to her birth story. I was fascinated that two islands off the coast of Massachusetts could be so different—Cuttyhunk, a local tourist destination—and Pekinese, a leper colony. Since I live in the Midwest, reading about life surrounded by water teaches me an unfamiliar perspective.

When I first moved to Chicago from the suburbs a few years ago, I felt the same way the boy, Langston, in the story felt—scared, bombarded with noise, and missing the open spaces and country roads. My home is close to where his apartment was, and even though he lived in 1946, we each found respite in the Chicago Public Library. We both love poetry—especially the poetry of Langston Hughes. The best news about this book is that if you love it, and you will, there are two more in the trilogy. Lisa Cline-Ransome is a prolific author with other great books—biographies and historical fiction, many of which I have in my library.