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Good books, old friends

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By Kara G. Kvasnicka

Tuesday, November 29, -0001

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As I set aside books at my library for Black History Month, I was amazed not only by the quantity but the quality that I had to offer. Today's authors and illustrators are making a conscious effort to provide books on historical events and figures that will excite children and give them an incentive to probe the past.

Two recent, worthy additions to the growing body of children's literature on the civil rights movement which will captivate young minds are Faith Ringgold's If a Bus Could Talk: The Story of Rosa Parks (Simon & Schuster, 1999, $16) and Ruby Bridges' Through My Eyes (Scholastic, 1999, $16.95).

Each book focuses on the specific instances through which their heroines, Rosa Parks and Ruby Bridges, changed American history and celebrates the extraordinary courage they displayed in order to have the same rights and privileges as any American citizen. Through rare glimpses into their personal lives, each book also gives us a better understanding of who these two women are and what motivates them.

Ringgold's book is a joyful tribute to Parks, whose refusal in 1955 to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, spawned a national movement to end segregation laws.

Bridges' book is a powerful first-hand account of the nightmarish ordeal she endured in 1960, when just 6 years old, she was asked by the NAACP to help end public school segregation in New Orleans by being the only black student in an all white elementary school.

Ringgold has written and illustrated several other children's picture books about African American history, including Tar Beach (a Caldecott honor book and a Coretta Scott King award winner), Aunt Harriet's Underground Railroad in the Sky and My Dreams of Martin Luther King. While her illustrations are always eye-pleasing, If a Bus Could Talk contains her most accessible and clearly worded text to date.

Most Ringgold books are a blend of fact and fantasy in which an elementary-school-aged child takes a magical journey to learn about events from the past. Ringgold intends her audience to have an adventure rather than a lesson in history.

Unfortunately, her writing skills are not always on par with her illustrative skills, and we are often left more confused than enlightened.

This is not the case with If a Bus Could Talk, in which Parks' life is related to a young African-American girl named Marcie by a magical talking bus. Marcie gets on the bus thinking it is the normal bus which takes her to school every day. She soon finds out that it is the bus on which Parks refused to give up her seat.

The symbolism Ringgold is going for is much less cryptic than what we have come to expect of her. She simply wants young readers to take the same ride on the Cleveland Avenue bus that Parks took and experience history as closely as possible to Parks' point-of-view.

As soon as Marcie is seated, the bus gives us an uncomplicated but insightful review of Parks' life in which we learn what inspired her to participate in the civil rights movement and about the movement itself.

The concept of segregation as well as the impact of the Montgomery Bus Boycott are explained. The names of many prominent civil rights leaders are mentioned, and, most importantly the cultural icon that Parks has become is humanized.

To most people, Parks is just a name on a timeline familiar to them only for her 1955 arrest. Ringgold insists she was much more than that, deserving credit for leading a life distinguished by more than one important accomplishment.

This is one Ringgold book in which the art rather than the text seems to be the accompaniment. Her illustrations of Parks at different points in her life are adequate, but her depictions of white people's hatred and fear of black people are more effective. The angry colors of her Ku Klux Klan and segregated swimming pool scenes will stick with you long after you have closed the book. The absence of any portrayals of blacks and whites coexisting harmoniously as the story progresses will also haunt you.

Like Parks, we have come to think of Bridges as more of a symbol of the civil rights movement than an actual person.

After reading Through My Eyes, you will want to give her a shoulder to cry on. Her moving autobiographical account shows just how deeply a young girl's life can be altered of by being chosen to change rules at a time in her life when she is too young to understand what the rules are.

Edited by Margo Lundell, this is a scrapbook of Bridges' first grade year as the first black student at William Frantz Public School. Bridges' memories comprise the main body of text. Her mother, teacher and other key adults in the events share their perspectives in intriguing sidebars.

Snippets from newspapers and magazines which covered her story and portions of the John Steinbeck novel which discusses her struggle, Travels With Charley, are also included. Dramatic black and white photographs and a reprint of the Norman Rockwell painting she inspired, The Problem We All Live With, give us even more to think about.

Bridges is not the most gifted writer, but children will appreciate her straightforward chronology and gentle tone as she relates not only the historical significance of her experiences, but the social and psychological consequences of them for both her and her family.

The first day at a new school is frightening enough without having to be escorted to your classroom by federal marshals through mobs of angry people who are threatening you with physical harm. And for a girl who had many friends at her former school, imagine what it would have been like to be deliberately kept apart from other students, isolated, in a classroom in which she was the only student.

One would not blame Bridges for being angry and bitter about what she went through. She was quickly forgotten by everyone after the school year ended, losing her mentors as well as her enemies. But there is no hint of ire in this memoir. She concedes that she lost her childhood that year and "have always had to deal with some adult issues." Still, she looks more for the overall good that came from her trauma than the bad.

After being content to disappear from public life for many years, Bridges eventually established the Ruby Bridges Foundation to provide resources to students in poor, unofficially segregated communities. Through lectures she shares her unusual personal history and how she comes to terms with it
"I now know that experience comes to us for a purpose, and if we follow the guidance of the spirit within us, we will probably find that the purpose is a good one."

Text books give children facts. Authors like Ringgold and Bridges give them reason to remember the facts.

So, the next time you hear children complain of boredom, remind them that the library has more than just Internet access. It is also a place where they can make friends with famous people between the pages of well-conceived books like these.

Kvasnicka, a former East Village Magazine news editor, has been the magazine's contributing editor and research consultant since 1989. She has a master's degree in information and library studies from the University of Michigan and is the librarian at Genesee District Library's Beecher Library.

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