Such an important picturebook! Readers follow the story of Audrey Faye Hendricks, the youngest marcher in the Children's March in Birmingham. I only knew of teenagers participating in this, so this book taught me a lot! The content of this book demonstrates how necessary this children's march was for JFK to introduce the civil rights bill to Congress--they arrested 3-4,000 minors and completely filled the jails with peaceful marchers. A month later, JFK submitted a bill to Congress.

As for the book's design, there were some pages with way too much text. I think it might have been more digestible if the text was incorporated more effectively into the spreads. Some pages didn't have this issue at all, with only one or two sentences as opposed to the 3-4 paragraphs on other pages.

Vanessa Brantley-Newton's digital collage illustrations balanced the seriousness of the arrests with the individuality of all of the characters, Audrey especially. She captures the nuances of facial expressions so masterfully. One spread aptly displays this balance: on the verso page, the viewer sees a crowd of black children, mostly girls, in colorful clothing and with many different hairstyles all grouped together in jail, though the setting is only conveyed through the text. On the recto page is an image of silhouetted marchers against a stark white background with photorealistic water digitally imposed over them to visually depict marchers sprayed by fire hoses. A jolting but honest comparison as the eye moves left to right.