Child of the Civil Rights Movement (2010)

By Paula Young Shelton 

Illustrated by Raul Colon

ISBN-13:  978-0375843143

Paula Young Shelton’s Child of the Civil Rights Movement relates her childhood memories of the 1965 civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, when, as the daughter of civil rights leader Andrew Young, she was, literally, a child of the movement. Her first-person narrative, her focus on her family, and the soft illustrations help this history lesson sneak into children’s minds as if Paula were just another friend telling them about her life.

Before describing the Selma march, Shelton tells us about her immediate family (her parents and older sisters) and her extended family, which included Auntie Coretta and  Uncle Martin as well as other famous leaders of the movement whom young Paula knew from family dinners and church services. She also describes her first protest, a spontaneous crying fit when her family was turned away from a restaurant in a new Holiday Inn in Atlanta. Even when talking about the Selma march, Paula’s story sounds like an exciting family outing rather than an event out of history. She focuses on the joyous first day of the march out of Selma — her parents took her to her grandmother’s nearby home while they completed the march — rather than on the difficulties that the adults encountered along the way.