Rosa: (Caldecott Honor Book)

Sometimes I think the nicest thing about Nikki Giovanni is she lets a good story unwind before you all by itself. And then I have to remember that's the craft, it appears so effortless in her hands. This book that I just got in a school book sale, for very little, is certainly a pearl without price, a deal here for anyone wanting to gift a classroom, school, library, teacher, child. This is the story of Rosa Parks on one day as it should be told, as it unfolds with the language of that day, with the details and immediacy of seeming so right, of a realness that might include macaroni and cheese and hearing of Rosa's arrest at a Piggly Wiggly. I love to ride buses. I rode them the first 28 years of my life exclusively. But nothing matches the heat of one of them in the true southern summers, and the need for them there. Oh that is another story to share of poverty and hard work, lives of hard work and hours of labors. When I rode as a young girl with my grandmother in Florida it was sweltering, noisy, lurching and an experience hard to think of how to place into a book. Yet this one seemed to sweep up that exhaust and fume along with the separation, the sections for the folks, the inherent separations of the south and seat it onto the bench just there, next to Rosa Parks as this seamstress going home. A Rosa Parks that was unassumingly good, who met and faced the barbarity of separate but unequal by refusing to be satisfied as less. No, on this day she did not stand and defer to a clod of a driver and a bus full of resentment and outright hostility that asked her to get up for a white patron. Rosa Parks asked then to be treated the way others expected to be, and she then we know so well, she was arrested. The simple act became a call to grace. I think if you want to teach this story, and everyone should teach this story with children, this is the writer and this is the book to start the journey onto a way of our meeting to face fate. Onto a bus with questions posed to the audience of our humanity. Are we able to allow our shadow, our bigotry, our lie to be cast away and give to another what we might want for our own? Are we able to rise from this bus, this symbol of movement, shared ride as travelers, this place of communion upon a road of justice, can we meet here in Mrs. Parks and find a collective way of traveling together as brother, over the horror of some approximation of as master and slave? Can we within this moment carry it forward in times arrow into the collective consciousness to rise and lift a people forward from here on our seat? This is what Giovanni encapsulates within her work and Collier illustrates to take to our children, the questions we hold out for them though our times to consider and collectively address. The book is inspired, it is accurate, it is driven to you on a dream of southern telling, so that you can, through the re-telling, shape the possibility that this becomes the least we can do, to sit together in mutua

Most students are familiar with Rosa Parks, but this story takes you beyond the bus. We get a glimps into Rosa's personal life, which allows students to develop more connections. The illustrations are amazing, as is all of Bryan Collier's work. Great book selection!

A must read for all youngsters. The feedback that we have gotten on this book from the kids who have read Tyler and His Solve-a-matic machine by Jennifer Bouani, is very positive. I highly recommend this book

I liked Ms. Giovanni's approach to telling this story. Given that it is a children's book, I appreciate that she looks at the humanity of Rosa Parks, (a woman with a life and a husband), rather than just her political role. I know that my kids will relate better to the story because of that. Furthermore, Ms. Giovanni doesn't pretend that the events on the bus were an unforeseeable coincidence. I find the lead up to be both personal and portentous of things to come. It reads better as being opportunistic rather than engineered or manipulated and I don't think that she portrays Rosa as lacking intention. In fact, I imagine that Ms. Giovanni's source (as I have read) was her meeting with Rosa Parks herself. I expect that, in person, the truth of her story reaches a deeper personal level and Ms. Giovanni felt able to build on previously documented interpretations. Everyone has a voice and with the warm, expressive pictures, I find it an effective combination for children.

This is a beautifully illustrated AND written picture book about Rosa Parks. Both the words and illustrations are sophisticated and will spark questions when you read this aloud. It is difficult to find books about Rosa Parks that speak the truth and this one does. Nikki Giovanni, the poet, writes in a straightforward way that doesn't dumbdown the text as so many children's books do. The conversations will go beyond this book...which is what we want with a good picture book! Bryan Collier's illustrations are genius. Each one is a discussion within itself. Excellent book if you are a teacher or parent who likes to not only read to your children, but also question and discuss beyond the text. Wonderful! Well deserving of the King award for illustrations.