By Bianca Schulze, The Children’s Book Review
Published: November 19, 2009
Congratulations to Phillip Hoose, the winner of the 2009 National Book Award, in the Young People’s Literature category. I haven’t had the opportunity to read this book, however, I thought I’d share the publisher’s synopsis …
Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice
by Phillip M Hoose
Reading level: Young Adult
Hardcover: 144 pages
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR); 1 edition (January 20, 2009)
Publisher’s synopsis: “When it comes to justice, there is no easy way to get it. You can’t sugarcoat it. You have to take a stand and say, ‘This is not right.’” – Claudette Colvin
On March 2, 1955, an impassioned teenager, fed up with the daily injustices of Jim Crow segregation, refused to give her seat to a white woman on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Instead of being celebrated as Rosa Parks would be just nine months later, fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin found herself shunned by her classmates and dismissed by community leaders. Undaunted, a year later she dared to challenge segregation again as a key plaintiff in Browder v. Gayle, the landmark case that struck down the segregation laws of Montgomery and swept away the legal underpinnings of the Jim Crow South.
Based on extensive interviews with Claudette Colvin and many others, Phillip Hoose presents the first in-depth account of an important yet largely unknown civil rights figure, skillfully weaving her dramatic story into the fabric of the historic Montgomery bus boycott and court case that would change the course of American history.
About the Author: PHILLIP HOOSE’s distinguished nonfiction includes the National Book Award Finalist We Were There, Too!: Young People in U.S. History and The Race to Save the Lord God Bird, winner of the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award for Nonfiction. He lives in Portland, Maine.
Add this book to your collection: Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice
