The Youngest Marcher is a story of a girl I'd never heard of before -- Audrey Faye Hendricks, who at nine years old was the youngest known marcher to go to jail for protesting segregation during the Civil Rights Movement. 

I thought this book did a good job of balancing its tone between serious and lighthearted. Reading about a young girl being kept for a week in a dirty jail cell is sad and disturbing, but also important. But the story keeps its eye on the prize, and focuses on young Audrey's determination, sense of justice and, at the end, pride at having helped to accomplish the removal of segregation laws. 

She was fortunate in that Martin Luther King, Jr. was a family friend who ate at their table and spoke at their church. He said that an "unjust law is no law at all," and called on people to fill the jails in protest. When there weren't enough people filling the jails, he declared that they should fill the jails with children, and that is what happened. 

I think this book has potential to communicate the before-and-after picture of segregation very well, in a way that children can understand. Of course, parents/teachers should use discretion as to children's age/maturity levels, but I think Audrey Hendricks' ability to put a child's face on the Civil Rights Movement is very important.

Scrounged From: Our local library

Format: Hardcover
Author: Cynthia Levinson
Illustrator: Vanessa Brantley Newton
Pages: 40
Content Advisory: As mentioned, a little girl spends a week in jail, and protestors describe being sprayed by water hoses and chased by the KKK.

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Little Kids First Big Book of Animals is a great book from National Geographic that introduces kids to many different kinds of animals all over the world. The book organizes the animals by the type of environment they live in: grasslands, the desert, the sea, forests and jungles, and the arctic.

Each section covers several animals (some more than others), with one or two double pages devoted to each animal. There are lots of great photographs, simple text, and an emphasis on the relationship between parents and baby animals. Some of the animals included are: snakes, giraffes, snowy owls, zebras, spiders, desert jerboas, penguins, raccoons, gorillas, koalas, dolphins, and more. 

This book can be read all at once if the child's attention span is long enough, but could also be read in sections for use in a science or geography unit. My five-year-old son says about it:

"It's nice and long and I like to sit and read it. It has beavers in it. They chop up wood to make their dam. The animal I like the most is an octopus. It has a siphon under it that goes into the water with it."

Scrounged From: Books-a-Million

Format: Hardcover
Author: Catherine D. Hughes
Pages: 128
Content Advisory: None

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Henry's Freedom Box is the true story of Henry "Box" Brown, an enslaved man who mailed himself to freedom in 1849. This telling of that story is both devastating and triumphant, and as usual, Kadir Nelson's illustrations capture every emotion and event perfectly.

Henry grew up with a master who seemed to treat him well, relatively speaking. But then he was given to his master's son and sent to work in a tobacco factory. After he married and had three children, Henry's wife and children were sold away from him (this scene might be difficult for sensitive readers.)

Henry's method of gaining his freedom leads him into a wooden box which is carried on carts and a boat, and includes some rough handling, but it works. This book did a great job of breathing life into a story I'd heard before only in a vague and generalized sense, and gives the name and details to go with it.

Scrounged From: Our local library

Format: Hardcover
Author: Ellen Levine
Illustrator: Kadir Nelson
Pages: 40
Content Advisory: Henry's wife and children are sold away from him around the middle of the story. 

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Let's Go Exploring: Calvin and Hobbes was an entertaining and informative book for me since, although I very much enjoy Calvin and Hobbes, I didn't discover it until well after its newspaper run had ended (I didn't learn to read until about halfway through it, and we were overseas for the rest). So while some fans may be well aware of the timeline of the strip, this was all new information to me, so very interesting.

Aside from tracing the evolution of the strip and creator Bill Watterson's career, the author spends some time analyzing what it was about this strip that made it so beloved by nearly everyone, covering major characters and familiar elements -- as he mentions early on, there are "haters" for just about anything, but very rarely for Calvin and Hobbes. This part (the first couple chapters) was enjoyable and can help fans feel a sense of commonality in their appreciation of the strip, without getting bogged down in details or overanalysis. 

The final chapter covers the numerous tributes and homages that have continued to try and help fans fill the gap left by Calvin and Hobbes since its end. This was slightly less interesting to me, but at the same time it also ponders the question of why so many felt the need to find closure in the first place, and demonstrates the degreee to which Calvin and Hobbes has become a pop culture icon, even without lucrative licensing.

(Thanks to NetGalley for the review copy.)

Scrounged From: NetGalley

Format: Kindle
Author: Michael Hingston
Pages: 120
Content Advisory: None

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The song He's Got the Whole World in His Hands was one of my favorites to sing as a child, but I never knew it was originally a spiritual.

Sometimes it's a nice change (and a lot of fun) to sing a picture book instead of just reading it, especially with small children. Kadir Nelson has created some wonderful images to accompany the song, focusing on a boy and his family as they interact with nature and with each other, creating a vision that reaches from the individual person to the planet as a whole. 

Scrounged From: Our local library

Format: Hardcover
Author: Unknown
Illustrator: Kadir Nelson 
Pages: 32
Content Advisory: None

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