Boycott Blues: How Rosa Parks Inspired a Nation - Hardcover

Pinkney, Andrea Davis

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060821183 ISBN 13: 9780060821180

Publisher: Greenwillow Books, 2008

Synopsis

This story begins with shoes.
This story is all for true.
This story walks. And walks. And walks.
To the blues.

Rosa Parks took a stand by keeping her seat on the bus. When she was arrested for it, her supporters protested by refusing to ride. Soon a community of thousands was coming together to help one another get where they needed to go. Some started taxis, some rode bikes, but they all walked and walked.

With dogged feet. With dog-tired feet. With boycott feet. With boycott blues.

And, after 382 days of walking, they walked Jim Crow right out of town. . . .

Andrea Davis Pinkney and Brian Pinkney present a poignant, blues-infused tribute to the men and women of the Montgomery bus boycott, who refused to give up until they got justice.

About this title

About the Author:

Andrea Davis Pinkney is the author of many acclaimed picture books and young adult novels. She received a Coretta Scott King Author Honor Award for Let It Shine. Her collaborations with her husband, Brian Pinkney, include Peggony-Po; Sleeping Cutie; Ella Fitzgerald: The Tale of a Vocal Virtuosa; Dear Benjamin Banneker; and the Caldecott Honor and Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor book Duke Ellington: The Piano Prince and His Orchestra. She is a children's book editor at a major publishing company. She lives with her family in Brooklyn, New York.

From School Library Journal:

Starred Review. Grade 3–6—Color and movement are vibrant components in this extraordinary book about Rosa Parks's efforts to take down Jim Crow. Text and illustration work in perfect sync. Andrea Pinkney chose the rhythm of the blues as cadence for the guitar-strumming hound-dog narrator: "This story begins with shoes./This story is all for true./This story walks. And walks. And walks./To the blues." In riveting poetic style, the author relates how Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus in Montgomery, AL, on December 1, 1955; her defiance brought about the boycott that changed this nation. The evocative text is bolstered by Brian Pinkney's perceptive vision: he portrays a swirling black mass, colored ink on clay board, to simulate a menacing bird—Jim Crow—that "pecks, pecks, pecks" its determination to undermine the movement. Jim Crow hovers menacingly over the bus and whirls above the beleaguered walkers, but the ever-present dog keeps belting out inspiring words, swinging his tune out over the people. Against electric blues and greens diffused with streaks of black line, Pinkney's artwork rivets the eye with the red of Parks's coat, the yellow of the city bus, and the sunrise red that signals the Supreme Court ruling to end segregation. Children unfamiliar with the historic events of the period will find the tale uplifting and memorable, and for librarians, teachers, and parents, this story will read aloud well, mesmerizing listeners.—Barbara Elleman, Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, Amherst, MA
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About this edition

• Publisher: Greenwillow Books
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0060821183
• ISBN 13: 9780060821180
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 36
• Illustrator: Pinkney Brian