The Year They Walked: Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott

Unlike the more comprehensive Rosa Parks: My Story (Children's Forecasts, Nov. 29), Siegel's considerably shorter book focuses on the immediate repercussions of Parks's refusal in 1955 to give up her bus seat to a white man in Montgomery, Ala. The author tells how Parks's arrest galvanized the black community and sparked a citywide bus boycott that lasted for more than a year, until the U.S. Supreme Court finally ruled the Alabama laws requiring segregation on buses unconstitutional. Siegel's narrative includes numerous quotes by Parks, as well as excerpts from speeches by Martin Luther King, Jr. Though lacking the passion of Parks's own story and marred by occasionally awkward writing (``Along the hard road some events gave her courage and pushed her along''), this account effectively documents the overwhelming humiliation experienced by Montgomery's black residents during a year filled with shocking incidents of racism. Ages 9-12. (Feb.)