kiddieliter

Bud, Not Buddy is a great book set back in the 1930s. It’s about an african american boy who has lost his mother and wants to find his father.  He runs away from orphanage in search for his father. All the boy has with him is an old suitcase. His suit case means the world to him. He keeps pictures of his mother, rocks his mother gave him, jazz concert flyers in his suit case. He thinks the man on the jazz flyer is for sure his father. In the end, it turns out he is completely wrong. This book is great for children to read to see what life was like for orphans back in the 1930s. 

This is a beautifully illustrated book about Rosa Parks.  It doesn’t detail her life from birth to her death, but it begins on the day she refused to give up her seat, when she was at work.  It ends at the end of the bus boycott, but has a lot of different civil rights struggles detailed in the book.

This book is a very funny book about the subject that most people, except young boys, are too polite to talk about.  It talks about humans, animals, and even dinosaur “dung”, and goes back to talk about early toilet paper and plumbing.  This will really appeal to the boys in the classroom!

This is a good Newbery medal winner that is about four sixth grade students, and their paraplegic teacher, and how they come together as an academic team called “the Souls.”  The students are all somehow connected, and they become very close and beat the seventh and eighth grade teams.  They eventually make it all the way to state, and really become a team at that competition.

By: Deborah Wiles

This is a wonderful story about two boys who are great friends during the time of segregation and its end. It is summer time and both boys are looking forward to swimming together in the public pool for the first time. But, the cruelty of adults ends this opportunity. It would be a great story to read when beginning a unit on the civil right movement. I really enjoyed reading the story, and the illustrations are magnificent.