Blog Entry #27

Walking Home to Rosie Lee

By A. LaFaye

Illustrated by Keith D. Shepherd

Cinco Puntos Press, 2011

32 pages

Multicultural

 

            Walking Home to Rosie Lee would be considered historical fiction, but I chose this book because of the heartwarming story about the African American culture. This book highlights a common struggle among African Americans, after the freeing of slaves. It is about a little boy named Gabe, his father died, and his mother was sold to another slave-owner before emancipation. Gabe walked and walked all over the South, from Mobile to Tennessee, in search of his mother, Rosie Lee. He met many different people in search of family members and many different Rosie’s, just not his. Gabe was tired, hungry, and just about to give up on ever finding his mother when he saw her sitting out pies in the windowsill of a hotel kitchen. This book will definitely tug at your heart strings and make you realize just how many people were walking the roads, all over the South, in search of their family members. It really places in your mind just how many families were worn torn apart, some were never reunited, and it is something many today would never even think about.

           The illustrations in Walking Home to Rosie Lee were done in acrylic paint. They all have a rough-edged texture and depth of color. The colors used in this book really pop and are pretty bright. The characters in the book are realistic when shown up close but still done in a graphic style. I believe the illustrations really reflect the mood of the story and the African American culture. The reader can feel the emotion and rich history on every page of the book.

Walking Home to Rosie Lee would be appropriate for a least second or third grade and up because of the content area subject matter. This book would be great to use during a social studies lesson about the post Civil War reconstruction period. It would be a great teacher read aloud or an addition to a classroom library. This book would be wonderful to pull out during Black History Month every year. Walking Home to Rosie Lee is a great read about African American history in the United States. It was selected as a 2012 Skipping Stones Honor Book and for the 2012 IRA Teacher's Choices Reading List.