Child of the Civil Rights Movement

By Paula Young Shelton, Raul Colón (illustrator),

Book cover of Child of the Civil Rights Movement

Book description

In this Bank Street College of Education Best Children's Book of the Year, 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…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Child of the Civil Rights Movement as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

I chose this picture book because it’s so well-written (including an unforgettable kid-friendly explanation of “Jim Crow”), because it’s a first-hand account by someone who took part in the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery when she was only four years old, and because I liked the way the author showed the organizers as an “orchestra” composed of leaders such as Dorothy Cotton, Ralph Abernathy, and her own parents, Andrew and Jean Childs Young, rather than a solo act by Martin Luther King.

From Mara's list on civil rights heroes.

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