Author: Deborah Wiles
Illustrator: Jerome Lagarrigue
Genre: Historical Fiction
Awards: Coretta Scott King Award, Ezra Jack Keats Book Award
Grades: PK-5
A little white boy is friends with an African-American boy named John Henry. John Henry's mom worked for the little boy's mom, so over the summer, they were able to play together all day long. They would go swimming together and go buy ice pops too. One day at the dinner table, the little boy's mom tells him they are allowing African-Americans at lunch counters, restrooms, and at their public pool now because they changed the law. The next day, they were excited to go to the pool together but when they arrived, they saw people closing down the pool. John Henry was really upset because he was excited to do exactly what his friend did. To cheer him up, the little boy asks John Henry if he wants to go buy an ice pop together so they walk in side by side.
I would read this book to my class to teach them about how different the laws were back in the day. In this book, you are able to see how it was before they changed them and how it was after they changed them as well. It is a book appropriate for students in grades PK-fifth grade because they are in the same general age group as them. It might be a hard book to understand emotionally because of dynamics of the relationship between the two little boys. I could use this book in a civil rights unit and an
MLK or Rosa Parks unit to teach students how different it was during that time period.
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