Black history is all our history
3 terrific books to help young readers learn, ask questions
Perhaps more now than ever, there’s nothing simple about explaining our nation’s history to young readers. But authors, artists and historians are equal to the task. With creativity and compassion, these three books take different approaches in their exploration of Black history and American history, offering young people not just information but an opportunity to ask their own questions.
“Build a House” by Rhiannon Giddens, illustrated by Monica Mikai. (Ages 7 through 10. Candlewick Press. $17.99.)
Fans will recognize the name of this author: Rhiannon Giddens is best known as a groundbreaking musician. Here she turns a song about resilience into a lyrical story of how African American people have built and rebuilt this country and their own lives, against the odds.
“You brought me here to build your house,” the song begins, over an illustration of enslaved people laboring in fields and homes. Freed but persecuted, their home burned down, an African American family pushes on — building their own home, finding their own place, treasuring their own history: “I learned your words and wrote my song/ I put my story down.”
With the story itself comes digital access to the song recorded by Giddens and world-renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma, a musical treasure on top of this beautiful story of not just surviving, but thriving. (Listen: tinyurl.com/GiddensHouse)
“My Red, White, and Blue” by Alana Tyson, illustrated by London Ladd. (Ages 4 through 8. Philomel. $18.99.)
Alana Tyson’s thoughtful ode to the flag, and the way African American history is woven into every stitch of it, opens the door to deeper conversations about patriotism, protest and freedom.
A little boy and his grandfather contemplate the flag their family flies, and the many different people it represents: “My flag is theirs too, and I’m happy to share.” But the book recognizes that supporting your country can also mean calling out its injustices and fighting to correct them — and that responding to symbols like the flag is a matter of individual conscience.
“To praise our flag, Grandpa said, is a choice,” the little boy decides. “It’s for you to decide, it’s how you use YOUR voice.”
“We Are Your Children Too” by P.O’Connell Pearson. (Ages 10 through 14. Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers.)
Young readers may not know much about the battle over integrating public schools in Prince Edward County, Virginia — indeed, plenty of adults know little about the stunning history of this sleepy rural county that made headlines in the 1950s and ‘60s.
P. O’Connell Pearson’s account of the agonizing years this county shut its schools entirely rather than comply with the
U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on desegregation digs deep into the personal stories of protesters and politicians, of Black schools without running water or indoor plumbing, and of racist textbooks and speeches.
The story begins in the perfect place for young readers: with young people, especially Barbara Johns, an African American high school student who launched a student strike for better conditions at her segregated school. She and her friends “didn’t see themselves as part of a big movement — this was 1951, several years before Rosa Parks or Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, or other widely known civil rights actions.”
They just wanted to make things better in their small part of the world.
But from that single, bold move grew an avalanche of change: The students of Moton High School ended up being three-fourths of the plaintiffs in the case in which the Supreme Court finally ruled that separate schools were inherently unequal. But for Prince Edward County students, that was really just the beginning of the story — a story of “Massive Resistance”: resistance to desegregation; closed schools; broken promises; and the exhausting, frustrating battle to truly integrate public schools.
Pearson’s account of this long struggle is a sensitive and eye-opening exploration of the hopes and fears of citizens young and old, Black and white, in this stunning piece of history that every Virginia student — and every American student — should know.