Claudette Colvin

“A Civil Rights activist who sat on a bus before Rosa Parks did and paid the price tells her story. Colvin and Hoose collaborated on a YA memoir in 2009 (Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice), but this boiled-down version preserves both major events—as a 15-year-old Montgomery resident in 1955, she was arrested for refusing to give up a bus seat and later participated in an Alabama lawsuit that succeeded in making racially segregated buses illegal in the state—and her claim to have inspired, but subsequently been overshadowed by, Parks. Jackson portrays her as a neatly dressed, studious-looking teen who sits stubbornly with the spirits of Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth behind her while the white bus driver delivers an angry lecture; she then goes on to kneel fearfully in an empty cell after being manhandled by white police officers. Finally, she poses in forthright dignity before a panel of white judges as she delivers her testimony. What emerges most strongly from her account is her forceful conviction, undimmed through all the years since, that injustice must be fought: ‘Because you can’t just ask for change,” she writes. ‘You can’t sugarcoat it. You have to take a stand and say, ‘This is not right.’ Like I did.’ As well as honoring her as one of the earliest and last-surviving Civil Rights pioneers, the book might well inspire readers to take up Hoose’s closing suggestion to ask, ‘Is there a little Claudette in me?’ Courageous acts, long undersung but well worth remembering.
—Kirkus Reviews

★ “Previous collaborators and National Book Award winners Colvin and Hoose reteam to relate the actions of a young Claudette Colvin (b. 1939) in reaction to segregation in Montgomery, Ala. Crisp text based in lived experience recounts how the protagonist “always asked big questions,” including, as a child, “Why do white people think they’re better than me?” Detailing an era in which “signs… told me where I could and couldn’t go,” first-person narration asks another question: “I wanted change. But what could I do?” Colvin soon found out, inadvertently becoming a civil rights pioneer when, at age 15, she refused to give up her bus seat to a white woman, saying, “It’s my constitutional right to sit here!” Vibrant illustrations from Jackson (Summer Is Here) depict characters past and present with precision, from Colvin’s act (which occurred nine months before Rosa Parks’s protest) to the Supreme Court ruling that segregation on public buses was unconstitutional. It’s a telling both personal and historical that reflects the urgency and determination of the civil rights movement via the perspective of one figure working urgently toward equality and justice.”
—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

★ “Living in Montgomery, Alabama, during the 1950s, 15-year-old Colvin was disturbed and angered by the Jim Crow laws that allowed restaurant owners, shopkeepers, and even the local bus system to treat her and other Black residents as inferior. When she refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white woman who demanded it, Colvin was arrested, charged, and found guilty. But that didn’t dissuade her from speaking up against injustice. Colvin’s courageous actions inspired others, including Rosa Parks, who had a similar experience—just nine months after Colvin’s trial—that sparked the famous Montgomery bus boycott, which led to broad changes. Hoose first met Colvin when interviewing her for his middle-grade book, Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice (2010), which won the National Book Award and the Newbery Medal. Their new book offers a picture-book retelling of her narrative. The book benefits from Hoose’s thorough knowledge of the era, his sure sense of which story elements will matter most to young people, and Colvin’s personal but broadly pertinent memories of growing up Black in the segregated South and taking a stand against injustice. Illustrated with expressive figure drawings and deep, rich colors, this picture book brings Colvin’s experiences to life for a new generation of children.”
—Booklist, Starred Review