From award-winning creators Winsome Bingham and E.B. Lewis, The Walk (A Stroll to the Poll) is a powerful, full-color picture book story celebrating a journey crucial to our democracy: the walk to vote—a perfect read aloud.
My granny is taking me on THE WALK. “Because leaders are not born,” she says. “They’re made through molding and modeling.” “What’s the walk?” I ask. “You’ll see. And there’s a few treasured souls coming too.”
Granny and her granddaughter are going on a walk. But this is not just any walk. It’s a walk that must not be missed; one that is more important than ever but has been made increasingly difficult for many to participate in. It’s a walk that joins together a community; that lifts voices; that allows us to speak up, stand up, and say what’s on our minds. It’s a walk for hope.
Where are all these treasured souls going? Just WALK ON and find out.---from the publisher
40 pages 978-1419747724 Ages 4-8
Keywords: elections, voting, civil rights, African American and Black stories, values, multigenerational, 4 year old, 5 year old, 6 year old, 7 year old, 8 year old
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“Southern change gonna come at last
Now your crosses are burning fast”
– Neil Young “Southern Man” (1970)
“‘The walk wasn’t always this long,’ Granny says. ‘But folks keep making it longer. They don’t want us to say what we have to say. That’s why we have to show up, show out, and show them.’”
“A Frontline analysis of voting laws nationwide found that only six of the 31 states that require ID at the polls apply those standards to absentee voters, who are generally whiter and older than in-person voters.”
--from “Why Voter ID Laws Aren’t Really about Fraud” (2014)
A decade after PBS first posted that article, there are now five additional states that have enacted racist voter ID laws. Please don’t tell me that everything is swell now, or that, underneath the thin veneer of legitimacy, Shelby v Holder was anything other than racists on the Supreme Court sucking up to the 21st century Klan and their ilk.
Nope. It’s the same old…err…stuff.
“Over the course of the summer of 1964, members of the [Ku Klux] Klan burned 20 black Mississippi churches. On June 16, Klan members targeted Neshoba County's Mt. Zion Baptist Church, where Schwerner had spent time working. Before burning the church, the Klan severely beat several people who had been attending a meeting there. Schwerner, however, was not there that day; he had gone to Oxford, Ohio, to train a group of Freedom Summer volunteers. Upon returning to Mississippi, Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney visited the charred remains of Mt. Zion. On the drive back to Meridian, their station wagon, known to law enforcement as a CORE vehicle, was stopped, and police arrested all three. Chaney, who had been driving, was charged with speeding, while Schwerner and Goodman were held for investigation. Neshoba County sheriff’s deputy Cecil Price escorted them to the Philadelphia jail around 4pm…After leaving Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman in the Philadelphia jail, Cecil Price contacted Edgar Ray Killen, one of the leaders of the local Ku Klux Klan, who was also a Baptist minister. Killen directed Klan members to gather in Philadelphia that evening. When two cars filled with Klansmen headed for the outskirts of Philadelphia, Price released the Civil Rights workers from jail and ordered them to head back to Meridian. He then joined the pursuit of the CORE station wagon.”
– PBS/American Experience “Murder in Mississippi”
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/ameri
When I was a kid, that’s whatcha got in America for trying to register Black voters.
The American Experience online article includes an FBI photo of the lifeless, immersed-in-the-mud bodies of James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Henry Schwerner, which were discovered buried in an earthen dam outside Philadelphia, Mississippi that September, when I was nine. No matter how many times over the years that I see that stomach-churning photo, it still makes me want to both puke and cry.
“My granny is taking me on THE WALK.
‘Because leaders are not born,’ she says. ‘They’re made through molding and modeling.’
‘What’s the walk?’ I ask.
‘You’ll see. And there’s a few treasured souls coming, too.’”
This is going to be a tough year, folks. How so many Americans can buy the Big Lie and support the ringleader of the January 6th attempt to overthrow America’s legitimately elected government is way beyond me. Where did we fail? Why have we evolved even further AWAY from justice and equality?
The big question for me is, when the little kids who get turned on to THE WALK turn 18, will there still be a legitimate American democracy?
THE WALK is a beautiful, hopeful book about members of a Black community coming together to go vote. A loving grandma takes her granddaughter along as she walks through town, gathering up the everyday people, and leading them all to the polling place (which happens to be located at the granddaughter’s school).
E.B. Lewis won a 2005 Caldecott Honor for COMING ON HOME SOON by Jacqueline Woodson; but it’s the duo’s 2001 picture book THE OTHER SIDE that cemented my fanhood of Lewis’s stunning watercolor illustrations. THE WALK is one more gem in his crown, and It’s my opinion that Earl Bradly Lewis’s name should join the list of Virginia Hamilton Lifetime Achievement Award winners sooner rather than later.
THE WALK was published last year, but it was just added to my local branch of the San Francisco Public Library system. I cannot think of a more important picture book to add in this year of the American Democracy Stress Test. If it’s missing from your school or public library shelves, or elementary school classroom collection, then I urge you to ensure that that gap is filled.
I’d also love to see the walk in this book inspire community leaders to organize their own mass walks to the polls. Because, given Trump’s mimicking of Hitler, we might not get another chance.
Recommended by: Richie Partington, MLIS, California, USA
See more of Richie's Picks <http://richiespicks.com/> http://richiespicks.pbworks.co
