Blood Brother: Jonathan Daniels and his sacrifice for Civil Rights

Blood Brother: Jonathan Daniels and his sacrifice for Civil Rights
by Rich Wallace and Sandra Neil Wallace
352 pages; ages 12 & up
Calkins Creek, 2016

So why is a biography of some white guy being featured during Black History month? Because Jonathan Daniels worked for voting rights, and it's still an issue.

Still. An. Issue.

Rich and Sandra Wallace have produced an information-packed (and very heavy) volume that explores the life and times of Jonathan Daniels, a white cleric from New Hampshire who answered the call from Martin Luther King, Jr. to join blacks in their struggle for voting rights. It was dangerous, in the 60s, to challenge the segregated ways of the south.

This book follows Daniels' life from childhood in Keene, NH through college in Virginia Military Institute, through his entrance into service in the ministry. In 1963 Daniels, studying at the Episcopal Theological School, had been serving residents in Providence, RI. He believed that the church should be active in promoting social change, and even joined the March on Washington. When Martin Luther King, Jr, asked for help, Daniels responded.

In addition to being an intriguing biography, the text and photos present documentary evidence of the struggle that black people faced. Even though they had the right to vote, segregation and southern laws prevented them from casting ballots. The Wallaces put history into context using multiple points of view.

The photos and primary documentation is invaluable. They also include a note on their research and forensic analysis of a photo. Also provided are a timeline, bibliography, resources for those who want to investigate further, and source notes for quotes. Check out their website for more resources. The only thing I wish had been done differently is to present text on white pages; black print on blue is difficult to read.

On Monday we'll join the roundup over at the Nonfiction Monday blog where you'll find even more book reviews. We'll also be hanging out on Marvelous Middle Grade Monday with other  bloggers over at Shannon Messenger's blog. Hop over to see what other people are reading. Review copy provided by the publisher.

Three Girls; One Message-in-a-Bottle

Currents
by Jane Petrlik Smolik
336 page; ages 9-12
Charlesbridge, 2015

Bones, Lady Bess, and Mary Margaret have never met and don't know each other, but a bottle bearing a message crosses the ocean - twice- connecting their lives. Bones is a slave, working in Virginia in the fall of 1854. She was too young to remember the day her pappy had been sold to another landowner - "but she remembered everything about how she learned she was the personal property of another human being."

When Bones finds the Slave Birth Records for the plantation, she tears out the page with her name and birth date. Burdened with this incriminating evidence of her actions, she rolls the paper up, puts it into a bottle, adds a heart carved by her pappy, and seals the cork with wax. Then, in the dark of night, she sneaks down to the James River and tosses the bottle as far as she can.

The bottle bobs its way downstream and into the Atlantic where it gets picked up but the Gulf Stream current and pulled across the sea.

In August of 1855 Lady Bess finds the bottle, half buried in sand, on a narrow beach on the Isle of Wight. Could it be from pirates? Lady Bess wants to be an explorer like her father, and she's heard plenty of tales of adventure on the high seas. But no. When she unfurls the paper it says only: Agnes May Brewster. Born: July 1843. Colored slave. When a lad who works for the farm is accused of stealing, Bess discovers who the real thief is and determines to help her friend escape from jail. She gives him the bottle, adding a treasure of her own. Maybe when he reaches London he can find someone who can help solve the mystery of Agnes May.

Instead of reaching London, the bottle ends up traveling with the North Atlantic Drift back across the ocean. Mary Margaret discovers it bobbing against the pilings when she and her da go to the wharf to buy fish. It looks like a genie bottle and when she opens it she finds an engraved gold cross with pearls embedded in it, and the birth record of Agnes May.

Three very different girls whose lives touch each other's because of a bottle. Could a bottle really travel from Virginia to England and back to Boston? In back matter, author Jane Smolik writes about the history of sailors placing messages in bottles. Using ocean current charts, she figured out where a bottle tossed into the James River might land. Then she had to learn what was happening across the world in the 1850s to tie the stories together.

A fun story backed by research, sure to appeal to kids who love exploring history and mysteries. Review copy provided by the publisher.

Freedom's Price ~ Blog Tour

Freedom's Price (Hidden Histories)
by Michaela MacColl & Rosemary Nichols
288 pages; ages 9-12
Calkins Creek, 2015

Freedom's Price is the second book in the Hidden Histories series, and it's every bit as good as the first. In this one, authors Michaela MaColl and Rosemary Nichols dive into the history of the Dred Scott decision and pre-Civil War America. It's a coming-of-age story about a young girl, and maybe a young nation as well.

Eleven-year-old Eliza Scott hates doing laundry. She wants more out of her life than to lug smelly shirts to the river's edge and scrub them... day after day after day. She's tired of being in limbo - not a slave, but not quite free. And she's really tired of living in the town jail wile waiting for the court to decide her family's status.

Her father, Dred, has sued for freedom, and until the court decides their fate, he and his family live in a gray zone. As long as they remain on this side of the river, in this town - they are safe... unless they're kidnapped and sold into slavery. But there are unscrupulous people... and Eliza learns that "almost free" isn't "free", and freedom is no guarantee that one will be accorded respect and civility.

What I like about this book are the questions it raises about race, society, and whether our society has progressed from those pre-Civil War times. I like the way the authors worked in the cholera epidemic and the St. Louis Great Fire of 1849. I also love that there is back matter about the Dred Scott decision. While the book is fictional, the story is true: Dred Scott did sue for freedom and won. That decision was overturned by the US Supreme Court - a decision that not only lit the fuse for the Civil War, but provided the underpinnings of the 14th Amendment: that all persons born or naturalized in the United States are citizens. You can read more about Dred Scott here and here.

This book - this series - is a great way to sneak in history for kids who love stories but "hate" history. It's also a great way to slake the thirst of kids who love history but think they don't like fiction. If I had stars to give out, I would.

Today is Marvelous Middle Grade Monday and we're hanging out with other MMGM bloggers over at Shannon Messenger's blog. Hop over to see what other people are reading.  Review copy provided by publisher.

Because they Marched

Because they Marched: The People's Campaign for Voting Rights that Changed America
by Russell Freedman
96 pages; ages 10 & up
Holiday House, 2014

If you are looking for a book to read this week, then put this one in your book bag. The photos and stories will take you back 50 years to the Selma march. In fact, the book begins with a story of the day the teachers marched - January 22... only a few days from now. It was a scary decision for them, because marching for the right to vote could mean losing their jobs. But they had to stand up for right, and stand up for their student's futures.

If you listen to the news, you know that some states are making all kinds of rules about what people need to do to vote: have drivers licenses, or special voter ID's. Those rules, they say, will keep "illegal" people from voting - people who aren't citizens. But if you live in a rural area, the drive to a state office where you can get those IDs could be a long one. And there's usually no public transportation. And if you are poor, then you might not even be able to drive. So the rules end up hurting many people who are citizens, depriving them of their right to vote for congressmen and the president.

Back in the 50s and early 60s there were a number of obstacles to voting as well - but they were intended to prevent black American citizens from voting. Obstacles like requiring a reading test, or cutting office hours to only a couple days a week for limited time.

Eventually the protests culminated in a people's march from Selma to the capital of Alabama, Montgomery. People flooded in from across the country, and Martin Luther King, Jr. led the march. Or marches - because it took three tries. Finally, on March 25 the marchers arrived after walking 54 miles, to be greeted by 25,000 supporters. A long walk may not sound very exciting - especially in the rain and cold - but this march put the spotlight on injustice and paved the way to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It was a great achievement.

Unfortunately, voter ID laws created by states over the past couple years are undermining the progress this country made to ensure that every citizen born in this country, regardless of gender or skin color or religion, has a say in how we govern ourselves. This is an important book not only because of the past history, but also because of the time in which we find ourselves.

 Today we're joining the roundup over at the Nonfiction Monday blog where you'll find even more book reviews. Today is also Marvelous Middle-Grade Monday round-up. Drop by Shannon's blog to see what other reviewers are talking about. Review copy provided by publisher.

Separate is Never Equal

Separate is Never Equal: Sylvia Mendez & her Family's Fight for Desegregation
by Duncan Tonatiuh
40 pages; ages 6-9
Abrams, 2014

On the first day of school Sylvia wears her shiny new black shoes and her hair is perfectly parted into two long braids. But when she's looking for her locker, a boy points at her and yells, "Go back to the Mexican school! You don't belong here!"

But she does, because the year before her family and others won their lawsuit to stop school segregation in California. And most of the book reflects on those earlier events - which happened nearly a decade before Brown v Board of Education. When her family moved to the town of Westminster, she could not register at the public school near her home. She had to take classes in the school farther away - a shack surrounded by cow pastures, without any playground equipment or tables for eating lunch.

Sylvia's parents, outraged by the injustice, worked to find a way to make education equal for all children. With friends and neighbors reluctant to sign petitions, lest they lose their jobs, they ended up taking the school system to court.

But it was up to Sylvia to face the realities of going to a newly integrated school. She ignored the whispers and name-calling and focused on making friends and learning her lessons. Author's notes and other material at the back add context to this important story.

Check out what other bloggers are reviewing over at Nonfiction Monday.  And if you're looking for another story about girls involved in school integration, check out this post from last month.  Review copy provided by publisher.

The Girl from the Tar Paper School

The Girl from the Tar Paper School: Barbara Rose Johns and the Advent of the Civil Rights Movement
by Teri Kanefield
56 pages;
ages 10 - 14
Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2014

There are so many excellent nonfiction books this year - and this is just one of 'em. In 1950, fifteen-year-old Barbara Rose Johns was a high school junior with a problem to solve. She and her sister and all her friends attended the high school for black students located in the next town. The school was a too-small brick building with temporary classrooms built on to accommodate the large number of students. Those "temporary" classrooms were, writes Teri Kanefield, "made of wood covered with a heavy paper coated with tar." The kids referred to them as "chicken coops". The problem, as Barbara Rose Johns saw it: they weren't temporary.

The roofs leaked. They had no heat except for tiny wood stoves - and students had to wear hats and scarves to class. When Barbara told her teacher that she was "sick and tired" of the second-class school, her teacher challenged her to do something about it. But what could a kid do?

Barbara led her classmates in a strike - a peaceful boycott meant to draw attention to the appalling conditions at the school. There is a wonderful chapter in the book that details the strike, and subsequent chapters that tell about the Civil Rights movement that came on the heels of Barbara's boycott and Brown v Board of Education. The book is rich with photos and back matter that includes authors note and a Civil Rights timeline.


Check out what other bloggers are reviewing over at Nonfiction Monday. Review copy provided by publisher.

Birmingham Sunday

Birmingham Sunday by Larry Dane Brimner
48 pages; ages 10 - 18
Calkins Creek (Boyd Mills Press), 2010

During the Civil Rights movement, the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church served as a rallying place for Birmington, Alabama's African American community. Martin Luther King Jr. used it as his "headquarters" when he was in town speaking about desegregation and equal rights. Because of that, the church - and Birmingham - became a target for attacks... bombings that were threatening but not deadly.

That changed on Sunday, September 15, 1963. Early in the morning, three Ku Klux Klan members planted 19 sticks of dynamite outside the basement of the church. At 10:22 am they exploded, killing four  young girls - Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley and Denise McNair - and injuring 22 others. The young people had come to prepare for Youth Day.

Rather than paralyzing the black community with fear, the bombing galvanized the community and guaranteed passage of the 1964 civil rights legislation.

Larry Dane Brimner writes about Birmingham Sunday, putting it into historical context. From the Supreme Court's 1954 Brown vs Board of Education decision through George Wallace's 1963 inaugural speech, Brimner shows how segregation was woven into the fabric of southern life. Words and photos show the Good Friday march that led to King's arrest, the resulting unrest, and the eventual compliance with federal orders to integrate the schools.

The Birmingham Sunday blast came just days later. Brimner does more than document the events; he brings history to life and puts human faces on the suffering. This thin book is filled with photos, biographies of the young people who lost their lives, and the struggle to find justice.

"When I began my research, realized that Addie Mae, Cynthia, Carole, and Denise were almost always referred to as the 'four little children'," Brimner writes in his acknowledgment. He did not want their names to be forgotten to history.  Nor did he want the other two children killed that day, Johnny and Virgil, to be forgotten.

 This is Nonfiction Monday. You'll find lots more great nonfiction books at the Nonfiction Monday blog. Review copy from my personal library.