The Bus Ride That Changed History: The Story Of Rosa Parks - Hardcover

Edwards, Pamela Duncan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0618449116 ISBN 13: 9780618449118

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2005

Synopsis

Marking the fiftieth anniversary of this important moment in time, the tale of Rosa Park refusing to move her seat for a white man in the segregated south in 1955 and the events that occurred as a result of this is presented in accessible verse with full-color illustrations.

About this title

About the Authors

Pamela Duncan Edwards is the author of more than twenty books for children. Originally from England, Edwards is a former children’s librarian who now lives in Virginia with her husband.

Danny Shanahan is a cartoonist for The New Yorker. He lives in New York with his wife and family.

Reviews

Grade 2-4–Published 50 years after Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, AL, this book retraces the segregation laws and the events surrounding the early stages of the Civil Rights movement. This historical account, illustrated with pen-and-ink and watercolor artwork, has a new twist as it is interspersed with modern-day cartoon characters guiding readers through the events and posing questions via dialogue-balloon conversations. Each new page builds from the previous one in the cumulative fashion similar to This Is the House That Jack Built. If used as a read-aloud, listeners will want to join in on the refrain, which was overturned because one woman was brave. This is an excellent tribute to Parks and to her role in history, told in a child-friendly style.–Tracy Bell, Eastway Elementary School, Durham, NC
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

K-Gr. 2. "This is a law forbidding / black people to sit next to white people on buses, / which was overturned because one woman was brave." Each page adds a new first line to a cumulative chant about Rosa Parks ("This is the boycott triggered by . . ."), and line-and-watercolor cartoon illustrations, which make use of speech balloons, depict kids asking questions and filling in the history of segregation and the struggle against it. Unfortunately, Edwards reinforces the image of Parks as the innocent passenger who worked alone to change the world, and she tells almost nothing about Parks' activist politics and the organizations she worked with. There's no denying, however, that kids will respond to the message ("Sometimes it just takes one person to be brave"), and the lively pictures help make this an interactive introduction to civil rights history. Pair this with Nikki Giovanni's Rosa (2005), which does fill in Parks' political connections. Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0618449116
• ISBN 13: 9780618449118
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Shanahan Danny
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 32