The city of Montgomery, Alabama has declared March 2nd, Claudette Colvin Day. That date marks the day in 1955, when the impassioned teenager, fed up with the daily injustices of Jim Crow segregation, refused to give her seat to a white woman on a segregated bus. “She was an early foot soldier in our civil… Read more »
Loving the Horn Book article,“’Leave the books on the bed’: Shaping a child’s social conscience” by Jen Mason Stott, the librarian at King Open School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Explore the book list. “…grounding difficult conversations in shared books shows respect for a child; a grownup trusts him or her to think critically about complex moral… Read more »
A high school in Oak Park, IL created a pop-up museum for African American History Month that included Claudette Colvin. “I teach African history, so we talk about how our history classes are white-washed and what that means and how that supports the racial hierarchy,” said Spoor-Harvey said while standing near a poster of Claudette… Read more »
We love this interview with our friend, Claudette Colvin.
The following article appeared in the Portland Press Herald… History lesson vindicates students protesting national anthem As Justice Fortas wrote in 1969, children don’t shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse door. By Phillip M. Hoose I write in response to the Sept. 15 Associated Press article “High schoolers joining chorus of anthem protesters”… Read more »
Need suggestions for beach reading or books to bring to summer camp? Horn Book just released their summer reading list. The list includes Phillip Hoose’s The Boys Who Challenged Hitler. “Hoose brilliantly shows how the astonishing bravery of ordinary Danish teens started something extraordinary.” —Horn Book
How many ways can you say, “what do you think that kid should do?” This eternal question from Hey, Little Ant is being said and read in 10 different languages globally. Look for the book in: English Mandarin Japanese Korean Spanish French Italian German Greek Hebrew
“At Cambridge Butterfly Conservatory, we offer a weekday Words & Wings Storytime in the winter for young children and their families. This story has become one of our favourites, and we include it with the theme/topic of “walking gently” and respecting all life around us, even the small lives. We do a small activity where… Read more »
The song that became the picture book Hey, Little Ant is not immortalized in the new edition of Rise Up Singing. Look for Ant in Rise Again Songbook: Words & Chords to Nearly 1200 Songs.
Knud Pedersen, the subject of The Boys Who Challenged Hitler: Knud Pedersen and The Churchill Club says in this video that “gratefulness has no distances.” Indeed, Knud, it does not. Phil Hoose, FSG and readers owe you much gratefulness for your bravery, for your ingenuity, for your stubbornness and for all the ways you have preserved this incredible story… Read more »