This history of the Stonewall Riots is intended for middle grade readers. Pitman does a lovely job of setting the stage for the world that the riots occurred in, with pictures of locations, people, and items, as well as back stories of the individuals and institutions involved. The prose is clear and easy to follow, if a bit dry, in my opinion.
While I liked the book, it was a little different than I expected. Some of the weirdness was the digital galley–it looked strange on the page with words appearing in multiple fonts and sentences breaking across different pages. The other part is that was laid out like an Eyewitness-style book, rather than a narrative, which is a very particular kind of reading experience. An Eyewitness book is designed to be dipped into at random rather than read straight through. I found it off-putting and it was harder to engage with the material this way.
I had thought that I could share this with my older elementary child as a good primer on the event, but I think I’ll put it on my list of books to check out with her in a few years. Right now, I think she’s still too young to want to wade through some of the prose. Again, the words are clear, but I think she’d prefer more of a story style retelling rather than reference book.
I was given a complimentary copy of this book via NetGalley in order to facilitate this review.
