Boycott Blues: How Rosa Parks Inspired a Nation (review)

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Reviewed by: Boycott Blues: How Rosa Parks Inspired a Nation Elizabeth Bush Pinkney, Andread Avis Boycott Blues: How Rosa Parks Inspired a Nation; illus. by Brian Pinkney. Greenwillow, 2008 [32p] Library ed. ISBN 978-0-06-082119-7 $17.89 Trade ed. ISBN 978-0-06-082118-0 $16.99 Reviewed from galleys R 6–9 yrs Rosa Parks’ famed act of civil disobedience and the ensuing year-long Montgomery Bus Boycott are here recounted by a guitar-strumming, blues-howling hound dog (“Who better to deliver this message than a dog-tired hound?”). Jim Crow (“laws that said black people and white people could not mix”) is personified in text [End Page 167] and illustration as a vast, menacing bird that swoops into a community and tries to peck, peck, peck away at human dignity, until the anti-segregationists put shoe leather to pavement and spark both a critical court decision and a broader civil rights movement. The format is effective, infusing what many children will regard as a bit of ancient history with passion and immediacy. Much of the success of the title will, however, rest on the (presumably adult) readeraloud’s gift for bringing out the music in the free-flowing prose; without the requisite bit of histrionic flair, the repetitions of “uh-huh” and “Yes he did, child” and “peck, peck, peck” are destined to embarrassing doom. Brian Pinkney’s wild storms of dense black wings evoke the oppression of an unjust social order; the boycott’s success dispels the heaviest brushwork and allows sunnier tones to emerge behind the integrated transportation system, until the final spread features the triumphant hound dog dominating the blue skies over the state capitol building. An author’s note on the boycott and a list for further reading provide extra background. Delivered with verve to an attentive audience, the Pinkneys’ latest effort should resonate well beyond Black History Month. Copyright © 2008 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois