Flashbacks: Echoes of Past Issues
through the eyes of his main character, a young girl named Ruth. Ruth leaves Chicago to visit her grandmother in Alabama, and along the way she experiences discrimination in the form of “Whites Only” signs. She and her family are refused access to a restroom, and they have to go out in the woods. They are refused a hotel room, and they have to sleep in their car. My daughter was shocked to learn that this
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was accepted as normal once upon a time and that African Americans used the Green Book to find places where they would be allowed to eat, sleep, and shop while away from home. In addition to being good stories, picture books like Belle, the Last Mule at Gee’s Bend and Ruth and the Green Book make history approachable for children. They also make discussing history with children approachable for parents and educators. n
Random House Children’s books
that people were and continue to be discriminated against because of the color of their skin, and certainly they had not learned yet what great courage it takes to fight against prejudice. This lesson on race relations was continued in the second Ramsey book I brought home. In Ruth and the Green Book, Ramsey shows children the struggles of African Americans traveling through the United States in the early 1950s
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courtesy of Wake County Public School System
2012 North Carolina AAUW AWARD John Claude Bemis received the 2012 North Carolina AAUW Award for Juvenile Literature for The White City (Random House), the third book in his The Clockwork Dark trilogy and the second of the series’ books to receive this award. The 2012 award was announced at the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association’s annual conference, 16 Nov. 2012. n above Above John Claude Bemis leading a discussion with Brentwood Magnet
Elementary School students, Raleigh, NC, 2011