WE'VE GOT A JOB: The 1963 Birmingham Children's March

WE'VE GOT A JOB: The 1963 Birmingham Children's March, by Cynthia Levinson (Peachtree 2012)(10+).  In early May of 1963, thousands of Birmingham schoolchildren took part in a massive campaign to violate the city's segregation laws and thereby flood the city's jails. Over the course of some ten days, more than 4,000 children were arrested, andor had fire hoses and police dogs set upon them.  This is the story of four of them.

In WE'VE GOT A JOB, Levinson provides a perspective on the civil rights movement as a whole, as well as focusing on what it meant to four very different individuals.  With exceptional research including personal interviews with many of the parties involved, Levinson brings to life an inspiring moment of history of children empowered and determined to take on the system.

ONE CRAZY SUMMER

ONE CRAZY SUMMER, by Rita Williams-Garcia (Harper Amistad 2010)(ages 9-12). In the summer of 1968, eleven-year-old Delphine lives in Brooklyn with her father and grandmother and two younger sisters, Vonetta (9) and Fern (7).

Delphine is the responsible one: organized and polite and always getting her sisters to behave, even if she can't stop all their fights before they begin.

And when thier father decides the girls are to spend a month out in Oakland, with their mother Cecile, who walked out on them years before, Delphine will be put to the test. Cecile's not like ordinary mothers: she never hugs and she never lets any of the girls into the kitchen. All their meals are at the Black Panther community center or Chinese take-out. Worse, Cecile seems to hate their being there or the fact that the girls exist at all.

Can Delphine keep her even keel while everything and everyone around her seems to be going crazy?

ONE CRAZY SUMMER is insightful, poignant, disturbing, and, occasionally, funny. Williams-Garcia does an outstanding job of framing the turbulent era, while at the same time keeping the focus on, and the perspective of, Delphine herself. More than a period piece, ONE CRAZY SUMMER is, ultimately, an affecting and illuminating story of family and responsibility.

ALMOST ASTRONAUTS

ALMOST ASTRONAUTS: 13 WOMEN WHO DARED TO DREAM, by Tanya Lee Stone (Candlewick 2009). At the dawn of the American manned space program, a group of test pilots -- all male -- was chosen as the original "Mercury Seven" astronauts.

And then, a new study was undertaken: to see how women would do if given the same battery of stress and psychological tests given the men.

And they passed with flying colors...

ALMOST ASTRONAUTS is a fascinating and uplifting story of the space program; and the politics and societal attitudes that swirled around its early years. More, it is a story of individual courage and hope and dreams. Highly recommended.

LEAVING GLORYTOWN

LEAVING GLORYTOWN: One Boy's Struggle Under Castro, by Eduardo Calcines (FSG, 2009)(10-14). In this memoir, Calcines (b. 1955) provides a fascinating (and sometimes chilling) look at how his family's lives -- and the lives of other middle class Cubans -- were affected by the thuggery of the Castro regime.

Calcines artfully portrays the frustrations of daily life in communist Cuba and his family's decade-long quest for freedom (until, finally, in 1969, they are allowed to leave everything and everyone behind to come to America).

Throughout LEAVING GLORYTOWN, Calcines's humor and love for family and friends shine through, even in the toughest of times. From beginning to end, LEAVING GLORYTOWN is an affecting story of faith, family, love, and hope. Highly recommended.