I love reading biographies. Perhaps its sheer nosiness, but I am fascinated by the stories of how someone famous came to be. Unfortunately, finding time to read a 400 page adult biography and keep up with children and teen literature is practically impossible. Luckily, I can combine the two, especially when the biography is a picture book!
Although it captures only one small part of their lives, Sit-In: How Four Friends Stood Up by Sitting Down by Andrea Davis Pinkney with illustrations by Brian Pinkney, is a biography of sorts. At a Woolworth lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, David, Joseph, Franklin and Ezell sat waiting to be served. The law, you see, had a recipe for segregation, but these “kids had a recipe, too. A new brew called integration.” This husband-wife team always does stellar work, but this is one of my favorites from recent years. The lyrical prose flows so well into the movement filled illustrations. You can almost see the teens shaking with fear as they sit waiting and as the protest grows so does the lunch counter in the illustrations. People sit waiting to be acknowledged at a counter curving around the two-page spread and off into the distance. The final counter spans three pages, with one huge difference. This time there’s, “a doughnut and coffee, with cream on the side” for them all.
