By Duncan Tonatiuh
The true story of a Mexican-American girl turned away from a white school, and the family court case that helped end school segregation in California.
In 1940s California, Sylvia Mendez is sent to the run-down 'Mexican school' while the nicer school down the road is for white children only. Her parents refuse to accept it and take the fight all the way to court in Mendez v. Westminster, years before Brown v. Board of Education. Duncan Tonatiuh tells it in his distinctive flat, Mixtec-inspired art, and doesn't shy from the sting of it, including the day a boy taunts Sylvia and tells her she doesn't belong. The family wins, and California's schools are ordered to integrate.
It widens a segregation unit past the stories children already half-know, showing that the fight for equal schools was also fought by Mexican-American families, and won in a courtroom by ordinary parents. The text is denser than most picture books, which suits an older reader in the unit, and Tonatiuh's art is worth studying on its own. It lands on a clear, powerful idea a class can hold: that separate is never equal, no matter how it's dressed up.