Nikki Giovanni’s tribute to Rosa Parks grounds Parks’s legendary stand against racism in believable details that reveal a hardworking woman who was ready for change. The story opens with Rosa at work at her seamstress job. “Some days she would skip lunch to finish on time.” But she left early on December 1, 1955, and at the bus stop “she fiddled in her pocket for the dime so that she would not have to ask for change.” Giovanni’s narrative covers the tense moments that saw Rosa refusing to give up her seat and then waiting for the arrest that she knew was inevitable. And it describes what happened next when the black people of Montgomery heard about Rosa’s arrest: the members of the Women’s Political Council who used the stencil maker, printer, and paper of Alabama State University without permission to make posters, and the boycott that thrust Martin Luther King, Jr., into the forefront of the Civil Rights Movement. Bryan Collier’s distinctive paintings are full of powerful images, not the least of which is the light-filled face of Rosa Parks. (Ages 6–10)

The story of Rosa Parks and her courageous act of defiance. Provides the story of the young black woman who refused to give up her seat to a white passenger in Alabama, setting in motion all the events of the Civil Rights Movements that resulted in the end of the segregated south, gave equality to blacks throughout the nation, and forever changed the country in which we all live today. She had not sought this moment but she was ready for it. When the policeman bent down to ask "Auntie, are you going to move?" all the strength of all the people through all those many years joined in her. She said, "No." An inspiring account of an event that shaped American history. Fifty years after her refusal to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, city bus, Mrs. Rosa Parks is still one of the most important figures in the American civil rights movement. This picture-book tribute to Mrs. Parks is a celebration of her courageous action and the events that followed. Award-winning poet, writer, and activist Nikki Giovanni's evocative text combines with Bryan Collier's striking cut-paper images to retell the story of this historic event from a wholly unique and original perspective.