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Title: Richard Wright and the Library Card by William Miller, Gregory Christie ISBN: 1-880000-88-1 Publisher: Lee & Low Books Pub. Date: October, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $7.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (1 review)
Rating: 5
Summary: How young Richard Wright got to read books from the library
Comment: Richard Wright is an African American author best known for his novel "Native Son" and his autobiographical work "Black Boy." In "Richard Wright and the Library Card" author William Miller fictionalizes a story from the latter work that tells of how Wright was inspired to become a writer. Growing up in the Mississippi of the segregated South of the 1920s, Wright was only allowed to go to school through the 9th grade. His mother had taught him to read by using the newspaper and Richard read everything he could find. At the age of 17 Wright traveled north to Memphis, where he got a job sweeping the floors and doing other jobs in the office of an optician. Wanting to check out books at the local library Wright is told he cannot do so because he is black. The only things he can read are old books and newspapers that he finds in the trash. But then, with the help of a white co-worker, Wright is able to come up with a strategy for circumventing the rules.
Miller takes some liberties with Wright's original description of these events in his life, but for the most part these changes simply reinforce the elements of the story; for example, the librarian is suspicious of Richard until he lies and says that he cannot read, at which point the librarian laughs. The detail is not in "Black Boy," but certainly having the librarian laugh reinforces both the irony and the injustice of Wright have to lie in order to gain access to books to read. For that matter the language in the story is made appropriate for young readers, who do not need to hear the epithets in use at the time to understand the prejudice Wright and other African-Americans faced in the segregated South. Miller also does a nice job of setting up the anticipation of young readers who, even if they know nothing of Wright's literary accomplishments, quickly realize that he is going to be able to get to read some books and have to wonder how he is going to do it and beat the oppressive system of segregation.
This volume has the advantage of wonderful impressionistic illustrations by Gregory Christie that pointedly capture the contrast between the face that young Richard shows to the suspicious white librarian, and the real face that comes alive when he is able to read books. This book is appropriate for young readers (Grades 2-5 in terms of interest level and Grades 2-3 for reading level) and emphasizes the wrongness of treating people as different in that Wright's co-worker, Jim Falk, is also considered an outside because he is Catholic, although clearly the Jim Crow laws are the implicit target of condemnation in this book. Wright considers every page of each book to be "a ticket to freedom," and when the young Richard leaves Memphis to go to Chicago and a new life, hopefully young readers will look forward to actually reading some of the important books that he wrote. But at this point the main benefit will be the sense of how things were different back then; I wonder how many young readers could look at the cover and the title of this book and guess correctly the story found inside.
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Title: More Than Anything Else by Marie Bradby, Chris K. Soentpiet ISBN: 0531094642 Publisher: Orchard Books (NY) Pub. Date: 01 September, 1995 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: Tomas and the Library Lady by Pat Mora, Raul Colon ISBN: 0375803491 Publisher: Dragonfly Books Pub. Date: 01 February, 2000 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: The Other Side by Jacqueline Woodson, Earl B. Lewis ISBN: 0399231161 Publisher: Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers Pub. Date: 01 January, 2001 List Price(USD): $16.99 |
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Title: Coming Home: From the Life of Langston Hughes by Floyd Cooper ISBN: 0698116127 Publisher: Putnam Publishing Group Pub. Date: 01 January, 1998 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: White Socks Only by Evelyn Coleman, Tyrone Geter ISBN: 080758956X Publisher: Albert Whitman & Company Pub. Date: 01 September, 1999 List Price(USD): $6.95 |
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