Loretta Little Looks Back: Three Voices Go Tell It
In lengthy monologues well suited to reader’s theater, three members of the fictional Little family speak about life in Jim Crow-era South. In 1927 Loretta Little lives with her sharecropper father and siblings and often witnesses their white landlord demean her father. When Loretta and her sisters find an abandoned baby, they name him Roly and take him in. By the time Roly is a teenager, he and his family own some land. The second narrator, Roly recounts an incident in which a group of white men poisons his family’s farm animals. Roly marries and has a daughter, Aggie, but his wife leaves the family to pursue a different life up north. As a girl in the 1960s, third and final narrator Aggie accompanies her aunt Loretta as she attempts to register to vote. Having seen her struggle through a rigged and unfair exam of arbitrary questions, Aggie helps her aunt study for the test and raise money for the poll tax so that she can vote. Through their personal narratives, the Littles guide readers through four decades of daily life, hardship, and maddeningly slow political and social change. ©2021 Cooperative Children’s Book Center
Illustrated by Brian Pinkney
CCBC Age Recommendation: Ages 9-13
Age Range:
Grades 3-5 (Ages 8-10)
Grades 6-8 (Ages 11-13)
Format:
Novel
Subjects:
20th Century
African Americans
Families
Historical Fiction
Racism
Voting Rights/Elections
Diversity subject:
Black/African
Christian
Publisher:
Little, Brown
Publish Year: 2020
Pages: 269
ISBN: 9780316536776
CCBC Location: Fiction, Pinkney