. . . If You Lived at the Time of Martin Luther King

Last night, my wife Kathy and I watched the second debate in the United States 2008 presidential election and there were some black people in the audience. When one of the older black people walked up to Barack Obama after it was over and had their picture taken with him, I turned to Kathy and said, "Just think what she must be thinking, she is old enough to remember segregation and now it looks like a black man will be president."
Young people are heavily favoring Obama, yet they really do not know much about how in the recent past it was difficult to impossible for black people to vote or even execute their rights. This book, written for the person in late elementary school, is a brief yet reasonably thorough explanation of the plight of blacks and the civil rights movement. This movement was much later coming that it should have been; yet when it did it was unstoppable. As is made clear in this book, not even the pain of death was enough to keep the dedicated people from marching and speaking out against the ills of racism.
Now that the country is poised to elect Barack Obama president, we can look at it with pride. However, we must never forget the pain and suffering that was endured in getting to this point, which makes this book so valuable as a historical retrospective on how we got here.

This is a perfect read for those middle grade elementary school students. It has a just-right balance of text, information about ML King and illustrations.

Martin Luther King Made the Black and white people be together and I wish I was there to help Martin Luther King. I wish I could of met him. When I was reading this , it felt like if I was there and seeing white people hurting black people's feelings. If I was one of the black people hearing the insults I would try to change it like Martin Luther King. I would recommend this book to all people so they could learn about his changes.

If you lived at the time of Martin Luther King J r.
By Ellen Levine

The Book is about when it was the 1950's to 1960's. A man named Martin Luther King Jr. was the leader for the blacks. White people were very mean to African-Americans. They had to use different schools, phone booths, neighborhoods, bathrooms, restaurants, hotels, and drinking fountains.

I like this book because I wonder about if I were there, would I have tried to help the black people? I know I would have.

I also think the illustrator did a great job on coloring the pages. I think the author wrote this book because it was about segregated laws. She wanted kids to know a famous leader or what it was like if the kids were there with him.

I read this book to my middle school students every year. Levine explains the need for a civil rights movement in terms that kids can understand. This book makes students want to learn more about this important event in American history.