Follow the Leader - Hardcover

Winslow, Vicki

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385322852 ISBN 13: 9780385322850

Publisher: Delacorte Books for Young Readers, 1997

Synopsis

When Amanda's Southern school district is integrated in 1971, her family is all for it. Amanda's nervous about what sixth grade will bring, but with her best friend Jackie at her side, she's ready for anything. After all, they'll be pioneers--making history like the men who landed on the moon. But Jackie chooses to go to a brand-new, private, all-white school, and Amanda must face public school alone. There she finds new friends, a challenging music teacher, and the courage to confront Jackie's prejudice.

About this title

From School Library Journal:

Grade 5-8. It's 1971 in Windsor, N.C., and school desegregation is about to begin when 11-year-old Amanda discovers that her best friend, Jackie, is going to attend a new private school rather than ride the bus across town to the formerly all-black elementary school. Amanda's parents insist that she attend the public school and readers follow the white girl through the summer and the first months of the school year as she deals with classroom tensions, conflicting emotions about her friendship with Jackie, and her subsequent attitudinal shifts about changing schools (all of which are compounded by early adolescent insecurities). Amanda comes to life in this first novel. She gets to know and appreciate children and adults she never would have met, if not for integration, and readers will be interested in her occasionally faltering growth. The courage of the youngsters who bore the brunt of this difficult social transition and the earnest, if sometimes misguided, efforts of the adults who shepherded them through it are convincingly portrayed. Though lacking the immediacy of the first-person accounts in Ellen Levine's Freedom's Children (Putnam, 1993), this is an accessible and, possibly, less-daunting look at an important era in our not-too-distant past.?Miriam Lang Budin, Mt. Kisco Public Library, NY
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews:

A rare look at the daily nuts and bolts of integration in 1971, from a newcomer who gets all the grace notes--and the fashions of the times--just right. Amanda's North Carolina town is desegregating; to get to sixth grade she takes a bus across town to a school that used to be all black. Her best friend, Jackie, has elected to attend a segregated private school, so Amanda feels alone at a difficult time. As she and her classmates work to adjust, they are forced into some soul-searching beyond what is usually expected of this age group. Winslow wisely lets the inherent drama of the situation play out without throwing in any artificial theatrics; this disarmingly poignant book doesn't deal in frenzy--no riots, no angry mobs. Instead, she shows a group of likable kids, gifted teachers, and concerned parents struggling together to enter a new world. The lessons the children work through never become didactic, because the characters are so well-developed. They are basically good people, aware of their flaws and attempting to change: There may be no more touching story than that. (Fiction. 9-12) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Delacorte Books for Young Readers
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0385322852
• ISBN 13: 9780385322850
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224