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Library | Material Type | Call Number | Child Count | Shelf Location | Status | Item Holds |
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Summary
Summary
When Amanda's Southern school district is integrated in 1971, her family is all for it. Amanda's nervous about what sixth grade will bring, but with her best friend Jackie at her side, she's ready for anything. After all, they'll be pioneers--making history like the men who landed on the moon. But Jackie chooses to go to a brand-new, private, all-white school, and Amanda must face public school alone. There she finds new friends, a challenging music teacher, and the courage to confront Jackie's prejudice.
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 5-8It's 1971 in Windsor, N.C., and school desegregation is about to begin when 11-year-old Amanda discovers that her best friend, Jackie, is going to attend a new private school rather than ride the bus across town to the formerly all-black elementary school. Amanda's parents insist that she attend the public school and readers follow the white girl through the summer and the first months of the school year as she deals with classroom tensions, conflicting emotions about her friendship with Jackie, and her subsequent attitudinal shifts about changing schools (all of which are compounded by early adolescent insecurities). Amanda comes to life in this first novel. She gets to know and appreciate children and adults she never would have met, if not for integration, and readers will be interested in her occasionally faltering growth. The courage of the youngsters who bore the brunt of this difficult social transition and the earnest, if sometimes misguided, efforts of the adults who shepherded them through it are convincingly portrayed. Though lacking the immediacy of the first-person accounts in Ellen Levine's Freedom's Children (Putnam, 1993), this is an accessible and, possibly, less-daunting look at an important era in our not-too-distant past.Miriam Lang Budin, Mt. Kisco Public Library, NY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Amanda, 11, is among the first whites to desegregate a school in 1971 North Carolina. "The realities and pains of sixth grade ring true, as do Amanda's growing respect and appreciation for the differences and similarities between herself and her African American classmates," said PW. Ages 8-12. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
In 1971 Amanda begins attending a previously all-black school in North Carolina after court-ordered desegregation. Without her best friend, who is attending private school, Amanda must make new friends and navigate the racial tensions. Winslow's first novel realistically portrays a dramatic period in history, and Amanda is a strong heroine who changes in believable ways. From HORN BOOK 1997, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
A rare look at the daily nuts and bolts of integration in 1971, from a newcomer who gets all the grace notes--and the fashions of the times--just right. Amanda's North Carolina town is desegregating; to get to sixth grade she takes a bus across town to a school that used to be all black. Her best friend, Jackie, has elected to attend a segregated private school, so Amanda feels alone at a difficult time. As she and her classmates work to adjust, they are forced into some soul-searching beyond what is usually expected of this age group. Winslow wisely lets the inherent drama of the situation play out without throwing in any artificial theatrics; this disarmingly poignant book doesn't deal in frenzy--no riots, no angry mobs. Instead, she shows a group of likable kids, gifted teachers, and concerned parents struggling together to enter a new world. The lessons the children work through never become didactic, because the characters are so well-developed. They are basically good people, aware of their flaws and attempting to change: There may be no more touching story than that. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Gr. 4^-7. When schools in Winston, North Carolina, are first desegregated in 1971, Amanda feels nervous in her new school across town, where she is one of the few white girls in her sixth-grade class. What makes it harder is that her best friend, Jackie, has chosen to go to a new, all-white private school. Amanda's candid first-person narrative expresses the jumpiness in the classroom and the schoolyard. There is some direct talk of issues--and the teacher has them read aloud and discuss Huck Finn--but though Amanda is strongly against segregation, she does not particularly like being a "pioneer" living at a "historic" time. What's great is that there is nothing reverential about the characters: we see them as angry, caring, funny, mean, and vulnerable--and we see them change. A classmate upsets everyone with his oral report about ugly white people; yet he and Amanda become good friends. In a shocking scene, Amanda slaps Jackie for talking about "niggers." Worse still, when Amanda is upset and angry with a classmate, the hated insult flashes from her own mouth, to her overwhelming shame. Readers will appreciate how at first Amanda self-consciously describes everyone in terms of color, but by the end of the story, they are individual people, and some of them are her friends. --Hazel Rochman