Because Claudette
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
From NYT bestselling author Tracey Baptiste comes a singular picture book that is both a biography about Claudette Colvin, the teen whose activism launched the Montgomery bus boycott, and a celebration of collective action.
When fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin boarded a segregated bus on March 2, 1955, she had no idea she was about to make history. At school she was learning about abolitionists like Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth, which helped inspire her decision to refuse to give up her seat to a white woman, which led to her arrest, which began a crucial chain of events: Rosa Park's sit-in nine months later, the organization of the Montgomery bus boycott by activists like Professor Jo Ann Robinson and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and the Supreme Court decision that Alabama's bus segregation was unconstitutional—a major triumph for the civil rights movement.
Because of Claudette's brave stand against injustice, history was transformed. Now it's time for young readers to learn about this living legend, her pivotal role in the civil rights movement, and the power of one person reaching out to another in the fight for change.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Emphasizing cause and effect, Baptiste follows activist Claudette Colvin (b. 1939), who, at age 15, refused to relinquish her bus seat for a white person. After her arrest, she met Rosa Parks thanks to her lawyer, Fred Gray; subsequently, Colvin began attending NAACP meetings. Featuring the word because in most clauses, the text highlights mounting support for the civil rights movement, and how Colvin's actions helped lead to the Montgomery bus boycott. "Because she had studied Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass at school, she learned how they worked hard and caused trouble so Black people would be treated fairly," one spread reads, richly enlivened by Engel's portraits, rendered in acrylic underpainting and oils on textured vellum paper. A powerful narrative that showcases generative energy of acts of resistance both big and small. Back matter includes an author's note and further reading. Ages 6–8.
