Who Was Rosa Parks?

I enjoyed reading this with my daughter. She had read some other picture books about Rosa Parks previously, but this one went into much more detail. She enjoyed learning about how the other people - like Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela, Eleanor Roosevelt and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. fit into her story. She was also captivated by the story of 15-year-old (pregnant) Claudette Colvin, who also refused to give up her seat to a white passenger but is often left out of HIStory.

The unfairness of living as a black person in the South sparked anger in my daughter. She did not like how she was treated as a woman either. She was dumbfounded that Rosa did not get more credit for all she had done throughout her life.

"The woman who had refused to give up her seat helped change the world wither quiet courage. Some people thought Rosa did not get up because she was tired or because she was old. Rosa said no. Those were not the reasons. "I was not tired physically,' she said, "or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in."

Who Was Rosa Parks? By Yona Zeldis McDonough / Illustrated by Stephen Marchesi
Amazon description: In 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give her bus seat to a white passenger in Montgomery, Alabama. This seemingly small act triggered civil rights protests across America and earned Rosa Parks the title "Mother of the Civil Rights Movement." This biography has black and white illustrations throughout.