Claudette Colvin : twice toward justice by Phillip M Hoose

Claudette Colvin : twice toward justice
Author: Phillip M Hoose
Publisher: Melanie Kroupa Books/Farrar Straus Giroux
Page count: 133
Genre: Nonfiction/ Biography/Civil Rights Movement/ Strong Girls
ISBN: 9780374313227
Recommend to: 10 years old and up
Lexile: 1000
Website: http://www.philliphoose.com/books.html
Awards & Honors: National Book Award for Young People’s Literature (2009), Newbery Honor (2010), A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year (2009), Cybils Award Nominee for Middle Grade/Young Adult Non-Fiction (2009), An ALA Notable Children’s Book for Older Readers (2010), YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults Nominee (2010)
Synopsis:
Most people who study the civil rights movement know about Rosa Parks’ refusal to move from her seat on a segregated bus but few people know the story of Claudette Colvin, a teenager who challenged the Jim Crow laws before Rosa Parks. In 1955, at the age of fifteen, Claudette refused to move from her seat on a Montgomery bus and was arrested for her civil disobedience. Handcuffed and forcibly removed from the bus Claudette Colvin, a student at Booker T. Washington high school, was on her way home from school. The community at large had a hard time supporting her move and her classmates even shunned her for being so bold in the face of the Jim Crow laws that segregated Montgomery, Alabama. Nine month later Rosa Parks, a 42-year-old woman of impeccable character, refused to move from her seat on the bus and the Montgomery bus boycotts started. Eventually Claudette would become a plaintiff in the federal case of Browder vs. Gayle. The argument being if schools could no longer be separate but equal, as established by Brown vs. the Board of Education, then buses should grant equal access to every American as well. The supreme Court backed this decision and the Montgomery bus boycotts ended.
Review:

During the six years I lived and taught in Madison, Mississippi, my school took the eighth grade students to Alabama every spring for a two-day field trip to see important places in the civil rights movement. This book would be a fabulous addition to their curriculum. Seeing the civil rights movement through the eyes of a teenager makes it come alive to a teen. How many teens feel life is filled with injustice yet do nothing to fight for what they know is right? Claudette was just a teenage girl but she showed adult determination and strength when she stood up for her rights.
Resources for Civil Rights units:
http://www.historicbrownchapelamec-selma.org/
http://www.splcenter.org/