This is Your Time by Ruby Bridges is a sweet book about a powerful event and time in history. Bridges own words show how it was to be the first one. How it was making history when you are not even double digits yet. She did not know what it all meant. She wanted to go to school. She did not understand why she was the only one in her classroom. She did not understand the toil it would take on her parents. And yet, she was making history and she would grow and share that experience with other children, many who have taught her lessons as much as she was teaching them.
The text is simple, but not simplistic. I was able to stand and read the book in a few minutes. It flows quickly for the adult reader, the 10 and up crowd might have to sit and take their time with it. The photographs are powerful look into the time. The entire work is a piece of history that is being repeated; which Bridges also touches on.
At the store I work at, we have this book shelved in our Children’s Section which technically is ages baby to 16-18. (But as I think young adult is better than almost anything “adult” I have read, I say from 0 to a billion). It is not only a good way to introduce civil rights, desegregation and a mini biography, this could be a great book to give as a gift. I can see it as a high school or college graduation gift, as it reads as a commencement speaker speech. Or you could give to a teacher who meant a lot to you (Bridges teacher was an important sanctuary for her). Or it could be given to someone who might need a little “boost” during these times.
All books to me are, “You take from it what you bring to it.” And each one of us will be affected differently because of that. Give it a looksee and find what you will.
as a little kid, the CIvill Rights Movement was presented to us like it was ancient history. I know that conversation has been making the rounds (and rightfully so!) as we strive to reckon with systemic racism and the need for restorative justice, but it is just wild to me that Ruby and my father were born in the same year, in the same area, just a few hundred miles apart.
Me too. It was ‘HISTORY not, only about 15-20 years before I was born (which is nothing in the grand scheme of time). I expect to see Ruby Bridges as an old grey haired woman in pictures and not a woman who is young enough to have a mother who just passed away a few weeks ago.