Walking to the Bus-Rider Blues (Aladdin Historical Fiction)

"Oh, I'm singing the bus-rider blues,

the Alabamy bus-rider blues.It ain't never ever gonna be the same."

During the Alabama bus boycott, six months after Rosa Parks made her famous bus protest, Alfa Merryfield and his family struggle to pay the rent. But someone keeps stealing their rent money -- and now someone is accusing them of stealing!

With only a few days left before rent is due, Alfa and his sister, Zinnia, know they don't have much time. To solve this mystery, they must "walk the walk and talk the talk of nonviolence" that Martin Luther King, Jr. and other leaders preach -- and what they discover may be more than they dreamed...

Harriette Gillem Robinet was born and raised in Washington, D.C., graduated from the College of New Rochelle in New Rochelle, New York, and completed graduate studies in microbiology at Catholic University, Washington, D.C.

As part of her research, she visited Montgomery, Alabama, in the same week of June that this story occurs, but forty-one years later. The natural beauty of Montgomery -- the Alabama River, magnolia and crepe myrtle trees, holly bushes, rolling hills -- impressed her. The warm friendliness of people touched her heart. Montgomery was a grand setting for the first steps in the glorious civil rights struggle.

She and her husband, McLouis Robinet, live in Oak Park, Illinois, and have six adult children and four grandchildren.

She is the author of several books about young African-Americans in historical settings, including Forty Acres and Maybe a Mule, winner of the Scott O'Dell Award.