How Diane Nash Led the Civil Rights Movement
A TRUE TALE WITH
A CHERRY ON TOP
A Paula Wiseman Book
(Simon & Schuster)
(pub.1.10.2023) 48 pages
Author: Sandra Neil Wallace
Illustrator: Bryan Collier
Character: Diane Nash
Overview:
" Diane grew up in the southside of Chicago in the 1940s. As a university student, she visited the Tennessee State Fair in 1959. Shocked to see a bathroom sign that read For Colored Women, Diane learned that segregation in the South went beyond schools—it was part of daily life. She decided to fight back, not with anger or violence, but with strong words of truth and action.
Finding a group of like-minded students, including student preacher John Lewis, Diane took command of the Nashville Movement. They sat at the lunch counters where only white people were allowed and got arrested, day after day. Leading thousands of marchers to the courthouse, Diane convinced the mayor to integrate lunch counters. Then, she took on the Freedom Rides to integrate bus travel, garnering support from Martin Luther King Jr. and then the president himself—John F. Kennedy"
Tantalizing taste:
" You arrive in the spring of 1938 on the South Side, when Chicago's leaves unfurl, emerald green like your baby-girl eyes.
CELEBRATION, JUBILATION. Your parents baptize beautiful, honey-brown you, Diane Judith Nash.
Their first, Chicago-born, no way they'll raise you down in the segregated South like they were.
True, Chicago has sides, but in your house, your parents don't talk about divides, hoping you know only love."
At first it works, until you're four, and the world war changes everything.
...
You travel across America for fifty years, so young people will hear how love creates change.
WELCOME, DIANE NASH, the signs say. Wonderful and wise, Diane Nash looks into your eyes and lets you know how she stayed brave the day she got arrested for ordering a sandwich. And why she refused bail and marched to jail to keep freedom rolling. It's because she loved you even before you were born.
SWEETLY, COMPLETELY. Proud to secure every freedom for you, she proved that
Love is fierce.
Love is strong.
Love is loud!
And something more: SANDRA NEIL WALLACE, in the Author's Note explains that "traveling across America for fifty years, she spoke with young people about her activism and how to create change.
'Although we had not yet met you,' Diane told them, 'we loved you. And we were trying to bring bout the best society that we could for you to be born into.'
And that's how fierce and strong and loud love is."
How Milton Hershey Brought
Milk Chocolate to America
A TRUE TALE WITH
A CHERRY ON TOP
Clarion Books
(HarperCollins)
(pub. 12.13.2022) 40 pages
Author: Tziporah Cohen
Illustrator: Steven Salerno
Character: Milton Hershey
Overview:
" Hershey's milk chocolate is the quintessential American chocolate bar. But in Milton Hershey's time, chocolate was mostly a special treat for the very wealthy. Milton grew up poor and was no stranger to going hungry. When he got a job washing dishes in an ice cream parlor, he realized how happy sweets made people--and how much he liked making people happy.
Over the course of his career, Hershey failed to make many businesses profitable, yet ultimately cracked the formula on milk chocolate. Here was a chocolate that was delicious, didn't spoil, and could be sold at an affordable price in communities across America and the world. And here was a business that could provide good lives in a welcoming town and an education for those who couldn't afford it."
Tantalizing taste:
" He hired scientists.
He hired workers from chocolate companies in Europe to try to learn their secrets.
Cook and cool.
Test and taste.
Milton and his staff worked day and night on his milk chocolate recipe.
YEARS went by.
Batch after batch,
one failure after another,
until, finally ...
America's first chocolate bar!
A melt-in-your-mouth milk chocolate."
And something more: A quote from the back of the book: "One is only happy in proportion as he makes others feel happy." - Milton at age thirty
And here's a sweet dedication: "For Dad (special Dark) and Jay (Milk Chocolate with Almonds)" - T.C.
Presenting Sister Rosetta Tharpe,
the Godmother of Rock & Roll
A TRUE TALE WITH
A CHERRY ON TOP
Harper
(Harper Collins)
(pub.2.14.2023) 40 pages
Author: Tonya Bolden
Illustrator: R. Gregory Christie
Character: Sister Rosetta Tharpe
Overview:
" Before there was Elvis, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Johnny Cash, there was Sister Rosetta Tharpe.
The godmother of rock & roll started as a little girl from Arkansas with music in her air, in her hair, in her bones, wiggling her toes. With a big guitar in hand and a big voice in her soul, she grew into a rock & roll trailblazer in a time when women were rarely seen rocking out. Her guitar picking was like nobody else’s!"
Tantalizing taste:
" And, man, didn't you play all kinds of ways.
Up on your toes!
Down on the floor!
Behind your back!
Stepping!
Striding!
Stomping!
Jumping up onstage -
in high heels at that!
Hip-hugging your guitar.
Duckwalking it too!
You even rocked fans in the English rain.
Sister Rosetta Tharpe,
with all your
fiery-fierce-feisty picking and plucking,
you blazed a trail for a fast-paced,
hard-driving, gritty, gutsy sound that made
the electric guitar
a star.
A music called Rock & Roll."
And something more: Tonya Bolden, in the Author's Note explains: "After Rosetta died, for years a host of folks didn't know that she had ever existed, didn't know what a phenomenal, blow-'em-away talent she was.
But then, don't you know, the lady had a comeback - became a star again!...
In 2018 - more than forty years after her death - Sister Rosetta Tharpe was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, in the category of Early Influences."
