Sometimes I am better than others about reading the childrens book that wins the National Book Award. Unfortunately I usually haven't read the one that wins prior to its winning, even though I may have heard of it. (I still have last year's winner sitting in my TBR pile). Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice by Phillip Hoose is this year's big winner that I managed to be the first to check out from the public library.
This is probably a middle school book, although some of my upper elementary students would get it, too. Most of my students are familiar with Rosa Parks and her story, so knowing that Claudette was the catalyst for Park's own refusal to give up her seat adds to her story. It is interesting to me that Colvin has faded into anonymity while Parks has become a person that every elementary teacher talks to her students about. I also did not know that Colvin and Parks knew each other prior to becoming famous. The photographs and other bits of information help to give perspective to the events of this time period in the South. My own education about Rosa Parks only consisted of a teacher mentioning that Parks was not the first person to refuse to give up their seat, but no other information was volunteered.
This would also be a good non-fiction book to pair with Boycott Blues: How Rosa Parks Inspired a Nation by Andrea Davis Pinkney and Brian Pinkney.
A must-have for anyone wanting to know the whole story about Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Alabama bus boycott.
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