Claudette Colvin: I Want Freedom Now!

by Claudette Colvin, Phillip Hoose, Bea Jackson (Illustrator)

Overview

Civil rights icon Claudette Colvin teams up with Phillip Hoose—author of the Newbery Honor and National Book Award-winning blockbuster biography Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice—to tell her groundbreaking story in this unforgettable picture book illustrated by New York Times–bestselling artist Bea Jackson.

Montgomery, Alabama 1955. Fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin is tired. Tired of white people thinking they’re better than her. Tired of going to separate schools and separate bathrooms. Most of all, she’s tired of having to give up her seat on the bus whenever a white person tells her to. She wants freedom NOW! But what can one teenager do?

On a bus ride home from school one day, young Claudette takes a stand for justice and refuses to get up from her seat—nine months before Rosa Parks will become famous for doing the same. What follows will not only transform Claudette’s life but the course of history itself.

In the words of Claudette Colvin herself, as told to acclaimed nonfiction writer Phillip Hoose, this empowering, heroic story illustrates how one simple act of courage can create real and lasting change.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780374389734
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	11/12/2024
Pages:	40
Product dimensions:	9.30(w) x 11.00(h) x 0.50(d)
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Claudette Colvin is a civil rights activist whose refusal to give up her bus seat led to the Montgomery bus boycott and helped bring an end to segregation on buses throughout the South.

Phillip Hoose is an award-winning author of books, essays, stories, songs and articles. Although he first wrote for adults, he turned his attention to children and young adults in part to keep up with his own daughters. His book Claudette Colvin won a National Book Award and was dubbed a Publisher's Weekly Best Book of 2009. He is also the author of Hey, Little Ant, co-authored by his daughter, Hannah; It’s Our World, Too!; The Race to Save the Lord God Bird; The Boys Who Challenged Hitler; and We Were There, Too!, a National Book Award finalist. He has received a Jane Addams Children’s Book Award, a Christopher Award, a Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, and multiple Robert F. Sibert Honor Awards, among numerous honors. He was born in South Bend, Indiana, and grew up in the towns of South Bend, Angola, and Speedway, Indiana. He was educated at Indiana University and the Yale School of Forestry. He lives in Portland, Maine.

Bea Jackson is the award-winning artist of beloved picture books such as Hair Like Mine by Latashia M. Perry and the New York Times bestseller Parker Looks Up by Parker and Jessica Curry. She lives in Detroit, Michigan.

Bea Jackson is a concept and character artist and an illustrator. In addition to her work that appears on book and comics covers and in magazines and articles, she has also created the artwork for numerous children’s books, including Parker Looks Up, a New York Times bestseller and an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Children’s Literary Work nominee; Parker Shines On; and Our Beautiful Colors.

Editorial Reviews

An Irma Black Award Silver Medalist

A Maine Chickadee Award Nominee

A Bank Street Best Children's Book of the Year

A NCBLA Notable Children’s Book in the Language Arts

A Kansas NEA Reading Circle List Selection

A Junior Library Guild Selection

★ “Vibrant illustrations from Jackson 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

★ “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

“A Civil Rights activist who sat on a bus before Rosa Parks did and paid the price tells her story . . . 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

“Inspiring and exceptional.” —Midwest Book Review

From the Publisher

2024-08-03
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. (note from Hoose)(Picture-book memoir. 6-8)

Kirkus Reviews