Abby Takes a Stand: 1960

SCRAPS OF TIME 1960: ABBY TAKES A STAND is the first of a series of juvenile novels by Patricia McKissack. A group of kids help their grandmother explore the contents of her attic and find scraps of memories. As each scrap is found, the grandmother, Gee, tells a story from her childhood and from the childhoods of other family members that exposes how differently today's world is from the one she grew up in. McKissack is the author of several novels for young readers. Besides chapter books, she's also written several picture books. Her subject matter ranges from serious to humorous, from realistic to historical to fantasy. This first book of the three-book series is on the 2008 Children's Sequoyah Masterlist. The story details the sit-ins the black community had to stage in Nashville, Tennessee to end segregation in the city. Although the story is deliberately kept small, I read the story to my son and he had no problem seeing the bigger picture as well as all the problems the black families faced while striving for equality. McKissack's language is simple, direct, easy-to-read, and emotional. Through just a handful of family members, the fear and outrage is quickly and efficiently shown to the reader. Abby's story is compelling to any parent or child. When she mistakenly ends up in a WHITES ONLY restaurant called the Monkey Bar, she's treated horribly by the white people there. Parents can easily know what it must have felt like by imagining how their child would have felt under similar circumstances. And kids can instantly identify with Abby at being left out of something and told she wasn't allowed to do something. The book is only 100 pages long, with big print and illustrations by Gordon James that are equally emotional. We read it in a couple sittings without straining ourselves. I grew up in this time period in Southern Oklahoma, so a lot of what McKissack writes about was familiar to me. It's amazing to think how much things have changed in that time period, and that our children will never really know what those times were like.

"Abby Takes A Stand" provides a wonderful way to bring the civil rights movement to life for intermediate grade elementary school children. The novel begins in the present day with Abby in the attic with her grandchildren. One of children discovers an old menu from The Monkey Bar, which sets up the main story. Abby is ten years old and lives in Nashville, Tennessee. On a trip to a local department store with her mother, Abby explores the store on her own for a few minutes and is given a flyer advertising a new restaurant, The Monkey Bar, by a man dressed in a monkey costume (who has just arrived from NJ and is unaware of the segregation that plagues the area at this time). Abby decides to visit the Monkey Bar, only to be confronted with cruelty from the patrons and customers when she tries to enter. This event sparks Abby's interest making a difference by joining the Flyer Brigade to support the local nonviolent protest of the injustice she has surfaced first hand. Her college-aged cousin, his girlfriend, and his friends are involved the protest in a more active way which is illustrated toward the end of the novel. The novel ends with Abby's grandchildren understanding the deep significance of the Monkey Bar menu and the importance of the fight her grandmother took for equal rights for all Americans. This book has vocabulary and concepts appropriate for grades 4-6, and is printed with larger font size to allow easier reading for emergent novel readers. It is "fleshed out" with short historical sections: "Remembering How It Was" and "The Rules For Nashville Sit-ins". I plan to read it to my fourth grade class in preparation for the upcoming MLK holiday. Highly recommended. From School Library Journal Grade 3-4-Grandmother's attic is full of family mementoes that, as Gee tells young cousins Mattie Rae, Aggie, and Trey, are all "scraps of time." A menu from the Monkey Bar restaurant is the basis for this story, which begins with 10-year-old Abby (Gee) in Nashville, TN, in 1960. One day, she wanders around a downtown store as her mother makes an exchange. Someone hands her a flyer advertising a new restaurant with a merry-go-round ride in it, and she decides to go see it. Unfortunately, Abby causes quite a stir when she arrives there. "And you know we don't serve Negroes in here. Have you forgotten your place?" snaps the manager. Abby becomes a civil rights activist as a member of the Flyer Brigade, handing out flyers about nonviolent protest. The story ends with the return to present time and the cousins and Gee looking at other keepsakes, which is the perfect set-up for the next book in the series. Sections entitled "Remembering How It Was" and "The Rules for the Nashville Sit-ins" round off the book. This easy chapter book, with simple sentences, plenty of white space, and a liberal sprinkling of Gordon's expressive black-and-white drawings, is an appealing and welcome title.-Mary N. Oluonye, Shaker Heights Public L