The Civil Rights Movement

KLIATT

This review addresses several titles from the "Lives in Crisis" series. Copiously illustrated with photographs, drawings, maps, and paintings, these brief histories are appealing to the eye. The text is not lengthy, but the print is small and the tone is such that senior high students would not think they are being talked down to as they read it. The chapters are organized to give readers a sense of the historical forces that were part of the era. For instance, the book on the Great Depression starts with WW I and how that war influenced the world-wide depression that followed a decade later. The slave trade book focuses on America, of course, but also deals briefly with slavery in the western world from classical times, with the role of Africans (especially Arabs) in the American slave trade, and so forth. As is true of each book, the text and illustrations are also broken up with inserted quotations from individuals—from the well known such as Frederick Douglass, about his grandmother's life as a slave, to unknown riders on trains during the Depression who describe their experiences. The book on Civil Rights starts with the Reconstruction Period after the Civil War but focuses most chapters on the 1960s, with a final chapter on the Civil Rights legacy. The series is called Lives in Crisis, so that is why the focus of the illustrations is on individuals or groups of people, while the text gives readers a sense of what it would have been like to live in such times. (Lives in Crisis). KLIATT Codes: JS—Recommended for junior and senior high school students. 2003, Barron's, 64p. illus. maps. bibliog. index.,
— Claire Rosser

School Library Journal

Gr 5-8-Narrative overviews of complex topics. Slave Trade, the better of the two, opens with a discussion of slavery as it existed in 1776, the year America declared that "all men are created equal." Grant continues with a description of the growth of the slave trade, the roles played by both Europeans and Africans, working conditions for slaves in differing parts of the New World, and the abolition and aftermath of this institution. The author provides background information and analyzes events in the context of the era. Civil Rights opens with the crisis in Little Rock, AR, followed by discussions of the history of slavery, the early civil rights movement, the development of the modern movement, its successes, and its legacy. The larger scope of this book limits coverage to only the most important events, and restricts the inclusion of significant background material. Both books contain numerous well-captioned photos, illustrations, and maps as well as excerpts from primary sources. Slave Trade is a good "big picture" complement to titles such as James Haskins and Kathleen Benson's Bound for America (Lothrop, 1999) and Milton Meltzer's They Came in Chains (Benchmark, 1999). In contrast, most libraries will find many extant titles, such as Meltzer's There Comes a Time: The Struggle for Civil Rights (Random, 2001), to be more comprehensive, better developed overviews of the modern civil rights movement.-Mary Mueller, Rolla Junior High School, MO Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.