A Flea For Justice
Marian Wright Edelman Stands Up for Change
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Marian Wright Edelman is a flea for justice. Just like her hero, Sojourner Truth, Marian pushes for change even when it's uncomfortable. She makes people itch, just like a flea.
A historical and political picture book biography for 6-9-year-olds about Black perseverance. An aspiring read for future activists and changemakers!
As Marian Wright Edelman grows up, she never loses the spirit she had as a child when she swapped the signs on water fountains designating where Black and white people were allowed to drink.
Marian learns about Sojourner Truth, and she decides to make people itch in order to make change, just like Sojourner did. Marian becomes the first Black woman lawyer in Mississippi, and she creates the Children’s Defense Fund, which continues to be a voice for poor children, children of color, and children with disabilities today.
A Flea for Justice is an accessible read with a unique, kid-friendly structure; award-winning educator Valerie Bolling directly asks the kid readers questions, like--“Do you know what Sojourner told that man?” to engage in the story. An inspiring, call-to-action biography that’s sure to make readers itch!
“Marian has spent six decades bending the moral arc of the universe toward justice, and we are all the beneficiaries of her noble mission.”
—Hilary Rodham Clinton
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bolling builds a third-person narrative around a Sojourner Truth quote in this forthright picture book biography of children's and civil rights leader Marian Wright Edelman (b. 1939). When the then-four-year-old subject drinks from a fountain labeled "White Only" and is pulled away by a teacher, she "didn't like being told that she couldn't do something." After learning about Sojourner Truth's response to her talk being compared to the bite of a flea ("Lord willing, I'll keep you scratching"), Wright Edelman seeks to end segregation-era inequities. She finds more and more ways "to make people scratch" as a college-age protestor and Mississippi's first Black woman lawyer. And Following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., she founds the Children's Defense Fund to ensure that, through education, "all children had a future." Grooms's airbrush-style digital illustrations show Wright Edelman across the decades as this thought-provoking title asks, "What will you do to make someone scratch?" Back matter includes more about the subject and an author's note. Background characters are depicted with various skin tones. Ages 6–9.
