A Bus of Our Own. (children's reviews).

A Bus of Our Own
by Freddi Williams Evans
Illustrated by Shawn Costello
Albert Whitman & Company, September
2001, $15.95, ISBN 0-807-50970-1

A strong work of historical fiction, this children's book is a sympathetically written narrative about a shameful and painful part of American history. Based on actual events during the late 1940s and early 1950s in Madison County, Mississippi, A Bus of Our Own introduces young readers to segregation and school busing during the early years of the Civil Rights era.

The story takes place at a time before the landmark Supreme Court case, Brown v. Board of Education, when Lil' Mable Jean has her mind set on going to school. But she has to walk five miles with her brother and the other African-American children in order to get there, and five miles back home. The school bus that passes them everyday carries only white children who tease and call Mable Jean and the other children names.

After injuring her foot, the trek threatens to keep Mable Jean out of school. But her determination to get an education eventually spurs the Mississippi community to get a school bus for the children.

A Bus of Our Own is filled with simple, colorful illustrations that are artful in their depiction of life for African Americans in the rural South during that period. Unfortunately, the story soft-pedals the struggles of blacks to achieve equal rights.

--Lydia Omolola Okutoro, editor of Quiet Storm: Voices of Young Black Poets, is a teacher and lives in Baltimore.