March Book One

Book: Lewis, J., Aydin, A., & Powell, N. (2013). March book One. Marietta, GA: Top Shelf Productions.

Summary:            This is John Lewis’ story about his childhood and his path to college and becoming an activist. He met Martin Luther King, Jr. and participated in non-violent protests and helped form the SNCC movement.

Impression:             I like the graphic format for this historical story. The book gives a biographical account of John Lewis’ participation in the Civil Rights movement. It provides interesting information about his childhood on the farm and his tenderness for the chickens under his care. He shares this value of education and love of learning with the two fictional boy visitors. Along the way he had help from many mentors and he credits their influence with his success today.             The illustrations are pen and ink drawings and printed in black and white. The black and white element gives a historical feel to the story. The dialog contains strong language, but I think it’s necessary to show the racist and violent danger that the young people faced. Some of the font is really small and hard to read and it takes away from the story. I think one improvement is to increase all the font sizes, so that the reader can read all the words.

Library Use:             I would use this book with middle or high school students for a comparison activity. Graphic novels get a bad rap from some educators, but I want students to judge this challenge for themselves. I would have students locate non-fiction resources about the history of the SNCC movement, sit-ins and information about John Lewis. Then I would have students compare the information in the graphic novel to the textbook or encyclopedias. They could create a quick comparison chart and share their results.