Children's Book Review: If A Bus Could Talk: The Story of Rosa Parks

If a Bus Could Talk:  The Story of Rosa Parks
Written and illustrated by:  Faith Ringgold
Published by: Aladdin, 1999
32 pages

from goodreads.com:
If a bus could talk, it would tell the story of a young African-American girl named Rosa who had to walk miles to her one-room schoolhouse in Alabama while white children rode to their school in a bus. It would tell how the adult Rosa rode to and from work on a segregated city bus and couldn't sit in the same row as a white person. It would tell of the fateful day when Rosa refused to give up her seat to a white man and how that act of courage inspired others around the world to stand up for freedom.

In this book a bus does talk, and on her way to school a girl named Marcie learns why Rosa Parks is the mother of the Civil Rights movement. At the end of Marcie's magical ride, she meets Rosa Parks herself at a birthday party with several distinguished guests. Wait until she tells her class about this!

* In honor of Women's History Month, we are continuing to read about famous women in history.  This book is from my own collection of teaching books.  I read this with just my daughter, knowing it was pretty lengthy and my son would not have the attention span to sit through it.  This is a good intro picture book for kids about Rosa Parks.  There were definitely some parts that I had to explain to my daughter ("What does lynching mean?").  However, we were able to discuss how it was unfair that black people couldn't sit anywhere they wanted on the bus and how the black children couldn't go swimming in the summer at the pool. She's still a little young to grasp the courage of Rosa Parks but I'm glad that she got a little intro and know that she will have some foundation of the events for when she learns more about it in school.

Family Rating:  1 thumb up.