This is a nonfiction picture book biography. The book deals with the historical realities of discrimination, focusing on Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955. However, in this particular text, we truly MEET Rosa: a talented seamstress (heading home after a long day of sewing dresses), a wife (heading home planning to make a meatloaf dinner for her husband), a member of the Women's Political Council ("tired of 'separate' and definitely tired of 'not equal'"). Often in our history books and/or biographical texts of Rosa Parks, we read the facts of the bus ride; the events leading up to it, as well as what followed, are usually left out. Here we meet the TRUE Rosa, as well as the community of people who felt the same way. She was one woman who started a movement for change.This book would be an excellent resource to teach a social studies lesson about Rosa Parks and also character traits such as courage, bravery, resilient, etc. The narrative of this story is unlike the structure of history textbooks and informational texts; while the facts of the events are the same, the event is told in a story format which makes it interesting and engaging for a younger audience. Through reading this book, students may also be able to engage in meaningful conversations about injustice and the issues of segregation. When word spreads about her act of defiance, other community leaders get together to organize a boycott of the buses until the segregation is ended. Inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., blacks in Montgomery refuse to ride the buses for almost a year, until finally they achieve their goal.
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