VERDICT A powerful historical picture book.- Jill Ratzan, I.
An author’s note provides historical context, including information about the woman who inspired Lillian (Lillian Allen, who in 2008 at age 100 voted for Barack Obama), and ends by reminding readers that protecting voting rights is still an ongoing issue. The story concludes on an emphatic note, with a close-up of Lillian’s hand on the ballot lever. Smith Jr.’s 28 Days: Moments in Black History That Changed the World (Roaring Brook, 2015), symbolizes hope as it travels across the sky. A bright yellow sun, which readers may recognize from Evans’s illustrations in Charles R. Lillian is portrayed in resolute left-to-right motion, and her present-day, bright red dress contrasts with the faded greens, blues, and grays of the past, sometimes in a direct overlay.
The illustrations, though, are what truly distinguish this offering. Winter writes in a well-pitched, oral language style (“my, but that hill is steep”), and the vocabulary, sentence structure, and font make the book well-suited both for independent reading and for sharing aloud. As she climbs the hill (both metaphorical and literal) to the courthouse, she sees her family’s history and the history of the fight for voting rights unfold before her, from her great-great-grandparents being sold as slaves to the three marches across Selma’s famous bridge. Illustrator's agent: Rebecca Sherman, Writers House.Lillian may be old, but it’s Voting Day, and she’s going to vote. A valuable introduction to and overview of the civil rights movement. Evans (28 Days) is equally adept at balancing the political and the personal, giving Lillian a stateliness and evident inner strength.
Winter's prose has a lofty, oratorical quality ("As long as Lillian still has a pulse, she is going to vote%E2%80%94and so she keeps on climbing"), skillfully blending Lillian's individual path to the voting booth with the historical context that made it possible. She remembers moments of progress and protest as she walks, such as the passing of the Fifteenth Amendment and the march from Selma to Montgomery, and she also hears echoes of her uncle describing the impossible literacy test questions he was forced to answer at the polls. En route, miragelike figures from the past appear in the background, including Lillian's great-great-grandparents, shown in shackles at a slave auction.
Winter (How Jelly Roll Morton Invented Jazz) introduces an elderly African-American woman whose walk up a steep hill to cast her ballot doubles as a metaphor for the struggle for voting rights.
0 kommentar(er)
