Richie's Picks: SIT-IN: HOW FOUR FRIENDS STOOD UP BY SITTING DOWN by
Andrea Davis Pinkney and Brian Pinkney, ill., Little Brown, February 2010, 40p.,
ISBN: 978-0-316-07016-4
"Four hungry friends. Eager to eat.
Each took a seat..."
So universal a feeling, it could be a quartet in a school yard or
lunchroom anywhere, any day.
"They ordered. No food came.
So they sat. In silence.
And waited. And wanted.
A doughnut and coffee, with cream on the side.
The waitress reminded them:
WHITES ONLY.
But those kids wouldn't budge.
They didn't move.
Until they were served, they refused.
All they wanted was some food.
A doughnut and coffee,
with cream on the side."
Inspired by the words and example of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King,
Jr. four male college students, on what will be fifty years ago this coming
February, wrote a chapter in a movement and changed America forever by
sitting down at the Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina --
in their best clothes, with their best manners -- trying to order at a
lunch counter where people of their skin color were not served.
What did they try to order?
The answer to that question is the oft-repeated refrain to this
beautifully-rendered picture book history of the Greensboro Sit-In. Their simple,
profound action spread to lunch counters in many towns and cities of the
South and resulted in the beginning of the end of an American era.
SIT IN is a book whose text has the power and lyricism of a great sermon
and whose images alternate between the calm but resolute visages of the four
young men, and the images of younger children, somewhere in America,
watching their family's television closely just as I did that year; watching as
that quartet -- steadily joined by more and more young people -- sat at
lunch counters, did their homework, journaled, and studied in order to wisely
utilize the time while waiting. They waited (and we little kids watched)
day by day until they were finally served.
What were they served?
"Four hungry friends. Eager to eat.
Each took a seat..."
It could be a group of young people in one of a million everyday
scenarios. But these were four students who had been paying attention in class.
A
half-century later they will be a lesson to children of their
grandchildren's generation, a lesson about how history is really made.
And, no, it doesn't start in Washington, D.C.
Richie Partington, MLIS
Richie's Picks _http://richiespicks.com_ (http://richiespicks.com/)
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FTC NOTICE: Richie receives free books from lots of publishers who hope he
will Pick their books. You can figure that any review was written after
reading and dog-earring a free copy received. Richie retains these review
copies for his rereading pleasure and for use in his booktalks at schools
and libraries.
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