By Doreen Rappaport
The life of Martin Luther King Jr. told in short scenes and his own real words, from a segregated childhood to the movement he led, and his death.
This one tells Dr. King's whole life in just a few sentences a page, each one landing beside one of his own real quotes, his 'big words.' A boy who reads 'White Only' signs all over his town and hates them. A young minister who tells people to fight back with love instead of fists. The Montgomery bus boycott, where a whole city walks instead of riding. The great march and the dream he spoke out loud. Bryan Collier's cut-paper and watercolor collages, all stained-glass light, make it feel like something to be spoken aloud in a big room. And it ends honestly, with his death.
It gives a class the actual man behind the holiday, in words short enough for a young reader and true enough for an older one. Because it uses King's own quotes, children meet his ideas straight from him rather than summarized, and 'fight hate with love, not fists' is a sentence a whole room can chew on. It also does the honest thing most classroom picture books skip, it doesn't stop at the dream, it tells children he was killed, which lets a class talk about why his words outlived him.