Houghton Mifflin reading

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Thoughtfully targeting their audience, Parks and Haskins reshape and simplify the events they recounted in Rosa Parks: My Story, making this Easy-to-Read book just that. Incorporating age-appropriate definitions of such concepts as segregation and boycotts, Parks's first-person account laces together brief, straightforward sentences that pack powerful messages: "There was no school bus for us," she writes, describing her childhood. "Sometimes when we walked to school, the bus would go by, carrying the white children. They would laugh at us and throw trash out the window. There was no way to stop them." The book's opening sequence, an account of Parks's pivotal arrest on a Montgomery bus, use dialogue to give the narrative an immediacy and urgency ("Why do you push us black people around?" Parks boldly asks the arresting officer); this is, curiously, the only chapter in which the authors use this technique. Clay's (The House in the Sky) paintings, almost one per page, vary from overdramatized tableaux to subtle reinterpretations of historical photographs. These latter illustrations are particularly effective in bolstering the book's inspiring portrayal of a major civil-rights activist.

Children's Literature - Meredith Kiger

This autobiographical story of a prominent woman in the struggle for civil rights should be in every school library. Nicely written in first person, it tells the story of Rosa Parks, the black woman who refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white customer in Birmingham, Alabama, in the early l960's. Rosa tells of her life growing up in the South and how it felt to be Black in that culture. Following her refusal to give up her seat on the bus, the story recounts the resulting boycott as well as the ensuing struggles for civil rights and the stories of those who lead the battles. Lifelike illustrations add to the balanced portrayal of those turbulent years. One caveat, the date of Rosa's sit-in is omitted and referred to only as "long ago" which may leave some young people thinking that these important events are just history rather than viewing them as part of an ongoing struggle.

School Library Journal

Gr 1-3This brief autobiography introduces readers to Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott. The subjects of segregation in the South and Parks's experience when she refused to give up her seat set a serious and later, hopeful mood. Told in the first person, the text is powerful, accessible to beginning readers, and succinctly covers the events surrounding the boycott. Best of all, Parks ends on a positive note with the desire that children will learn respect, not hate. A few lines of dialogue, several dates, and the mention of locations put the story in perspective. Clay's watercolor paintings enhance the text. Other good books appropriate for the same age group include David Adler's A Picture Book of Rosa Parks (Holiday, 1993) and Eloise Greenfield's Rosa Parks (HarperCollins, 1995).Mary M. Hopf, Los Angeles Public Library

Kirkus Reviews

I Am Rosa Parks ( PLB Feb. 1997; 48 pp.; 0- 8037-1206-5; PLB 0-8037-1207-3): In the Easy-To-Read series, Parks and Haskins mold for a younger readership the material in their acclaimed Rosa Parks (1992). Unlike most books in the series, this one will require adult prompting for difficult words and ideas, although the language is smoothly simple in most places. The workmanlike black-and-white illustrations complement the story of a quietly courageous heroine.