Children's Books,  History,  Picture Books

Honoring Dr. King

This picture book was a good introduction for my girls to Martin Luther King. It’s geared toward young children; there’s even an introductory heads-up to parents reading to preschoolers that the book states that Dr. King was shot, and it can be sidestepped by substituting “died” instead.

The book provides a very condensed and simplified overview of Dr. King’s life, starting in his boyhood and extending through the Civil Rights era. I appreciated its simplicity and directness. An example:

The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., is famous because he helped our country change some of its laws. A law is like a rule. Once there was a law in some places that said only white people could sit in the front of a bus and that black people had to sit in the back. Martin Luther King said this law needed to be changed. Rosa Parks and other people helped him change it. Now all people can sit in any seat they like.

It was well-done, and appeals to children’s natural and uncompromising sense of fairness.

This book is beautiful and contains the complete text of Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. I read about two pages to the girls and gave up. It’s illustrated, suggesting it’s for young children, but of course the text itself is over their heads. I should have investigated it more before checking it out of the library, but I was instantly drawn to it because of its cover.

Still, the foreword by Coretta Scott King gives the book authority, and the illustrations are all paintings by fifteen Coretta Scott King Award and Honor Book artists. At the end is a brief biography of Dr. King, followed by a paragraph or so of description of each of the paintings, written by the artists.

I love the idea for this book, but it’s for children a little older than my 7 and 5-year-olds. I feel guilty for checking it out, and depriving someone else more ready for it — but I enjoyed looking through it.

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