About This Book

Every morning before school, Coretta Scott would watch the bus for white children  drive by while she walked down the hot, dusty road to the school for black children.  There were many things Coretta couldn't do because of the color of her skin. Years later, Coretta helped her husband, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.  lead the civil rights movement. Together they led protest marches and stood up to prejudice and violence, as they struggled to fulfill their dream.

The author of many books about African-American history, including Little Louis and the Jazz Band, Angela Shelf Medearis has written a concise, engaging biography about the life of Coretta Scott King. Using Coretta Scott King's autobiography as her main source, Medearis charts the important events in King's life from her early days as a young girl aware of racial injustice, to her continuation of her husband's political work after his death. Key events in the civil rights movement, such as segregation, and Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott, are woven into the narrative so even young readers innocent of history can enjoy and understand King's story.

Medearis' style draws the reader in from the first scene in which King sings in front of a large crowd, hoping to raise money to win freedom and equality for African Americans. From there, the narrative swings back in time to King's beginnings as a child during the Great Depression, the dangerous threats suffered by her family, her musical training and desire to be an opera singer, and the romantic meeting between her and her husband-to-be, Martin Luther King, Jr. The second half of the book deals with King's involvement in her husband's work, and provides a thorough overview of this difficult, but triumphant period in history.

Anna Rich's soft pencil drawings are perceptive and emotional, and make a fine complement to the black-and-white photographs sprinkled throughout the text.