I have a giant stack of picture books at home right now. It seems to have blossomed overnight, so the next few posts will be about multiple picture books that have some sort of connection.
Today’s books all have young girls facing difficult circumstances.
First up: Hidden by Loïc Dauvillier.
More and more kids don’t know much, if anything about WWII. As we stand on the brink of the 100th anniversary of WWI, it worries me that they won’t know about the Holocaust before too long. This graphic novel is written for young readers and would be a rest way to introduce them, gently, to this terrible part of human history.
As you can see from the samples above, the story opens with a grandmother and her granddaughter, talking in the idle of the night, when both can’t sleep. And that is the tome of the book. MAny of the worst details are left out, because it is a story for young people. As they get older , they will learn of the terrible parts this book leaves out. For now, it is enough for them to know as much as Elsa does from her grandmother.
Next up: Anna Carries Water by Olive Senior.
Set in the Caribbean, Anna Carries Water is about a young girl who longs to carry water on her head like her older siblings. It is a simple story about the power of determination, as Anna achieves her goal and overcomes her fear. Bright illustrations by Laura James really energize the text.
And finally: The Girl From the Tarpaper School by Teri Kanefield
Goodreads Summary:
Before the Little Rock Nine, before Rosa Parks, before Martin Luther King Jr. and his March on Washington, there was Barbara Rose Johns, a teenager who used nonviolent civil disobedience to draw attention to her cause. In 1951, witnessing the unfair conditions in her racially segregated high school, Barbara Johns led a walkout—the first public protest of its kind demanding racial equality in the U.S.—jumpstarting the American civil rights movement. Ridiculed by the white superintendent and school board, local newspapers, and others, and even after a cross was burned on the school grounds, Barbara and her classmates held firm and did not give up. Her school’s case went all the way to the Supreme Court and helped end segregation as part of Brown v. Board of Education.
Barbara Johns grew up to become a librarian in the Philadelphia school system. The Girl from the Tar Paper School mixes biography with social history and is illustrated with family photos, images of the school and town, and archival documents from classmates and local and national news media. The book includes a civil rights timeline, bibliography, and index.
All in all, three great books about young girls.
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