The Year They Walked: Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott

A study of the Montgomery bus boycott reveals how one woman, who refused to give up her bus seat on a cold day in 1955, sparked the nonviolent civil rights movement in the South that eventually ended segregation.

Grade 4-7-- A partial biography of Rosa Parks and her role in the boycott. Her childhood and efforts to obtain a formal education are described in a smoothly written third-person narrative void of conversational structures. Siegel combines descriptions of Parks's life and work with the growth of the civil rights efforts in the deep South; she also explains how the black community organized itself to assert its constitutional rights and gained international attention. It is also the story of the rise of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference presented in language and format appropriate to its audience. The good quality black-and-white photographs intermittently interspersed throughout the text are informative and affecting. The primary distinction between this title and Rosa Parks (Dial, 1992) is in tone. To read her autobiography is to experience the events personally, because Parks seems to tell her story directly to each reader. The two books are complementary, although very much alike in information and scope.
- Helen E. Williams, formerly at University of Maryland, College Park
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Unlike the more comprehensive Rosa Parks: My Story (Children's Forecasts, Nov. 29), Siegel's considerably shorter book focuses on the immediate repercussions of Parks's refusal in 1955 to give up her bus seat to a white man in Montgomery, Ala. The author tells how Parks's arrest galvanized the black community and sparked a citywide bus boycott that lasted for more than a year, until the U.S. Supreme Court finally ruled the Alabama laws requiring segregation on buses unconstitutional. Siegel's narrative includes numerous quotes by Parks, as well as excerpts from speeches by Martin Luther King, Jr. Though lacking the passion of Parks's own story and marred by occasionally awkward writing ("Along the hard road some events gave her courage and pushed her along"), this account effectively documents the overwhelming humiliation experienced by Montgomery's black residents during a year filled with shocking incidents of racism. Ages 9-12.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The title accurately reflects the focus of this volume: the 13 months beginning with Parks's refusal to give up her seat and concluding with the Supreme Court's decision declaring bus segregation unconstitutional. Siegel manages to include dense amounts of background material on those involved and the events preceding the boycott; even so, oversimplification sometimes obscures meaning. Young readers will have to infer that Jo Ann Robinson is an African-American in order to understand the humiliating incident that cemented her resolve toward seeking changes; and they will have to figure out for themselves why the pregnancy of Claudette Colvin prevented her arrest from becoming a test case. There are problems of terminology as well: ``African-American'' doesn't appear until well into the book; also, declaring that the ``black leadership outwitted city officials'' implies a stereotypical guile apt to be misunderstood at this age level. An easily read account of these compelling events, but Parks's own book (Rosa Parks: My Story, p. 1597) is a better choice. Bibliography; index and b&w photos not seen. (Nonfiction. 11+) -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.