. . . If You Lived at the Time of Martin Luther King

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

A history of the sacrifice that led to the United States being poised to elect a black man president, 2008-10-08
Last night, my wife Kathy and I watched the second debate in the United States 2008 presidential election and there were some black people in the audience. When one of the older black people walked up to Barack Obama after it was over and had their picture taken with him, I turned to Kathy and said, "Just think what she must be thinking, she is old enough to remember segregation and now it looks like a black man will be president." br / Young people are heavily favoring Obama, yet they really do not know much about how in the recent past it was difficult to impossible for black people to vote or even execute their rights. This book, written for the person in late elementary school, is a brief yet reasonably thorough explanation of the plight of blacks and the civil rights movement. This movement was much later coming that it should have been; yet when it did it was unstoppable. As is made clear in this book, not even the pain of death was enough to keep the dedicated people from marching and speaking out against the ills of racism. br / Now that the country is poised to elect Barack Obama president, we can look at it with pride. However, we must never forget the pain and suffering that was endured in getting to this point, which makes this book so valuable as a historical retrospective on how we got here. br /

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

biography selection, 2007-07-08
This is a perfect read for those middle grade elementary school students. It has a just-right balance of text, information about ML King and illustrations.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

A great book about a great man!, 2005-06-03
Martin Luther King Made the Black and white people be together and I wish I was there to help Martin Luther King. I wish I could of met him. When I was reading this , it felt like if I was there and seeing white people hurting black people's feelings. If I was one of the black people hearing the insults I would try to change it like Martin Luther King. I would recommend this book to all people so they could learn about his changes.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

''Come Learn About A Famous Man And You Will Be Number 1'', 2002-05-08
If you lived at the time of Martin Luther King J r.brBy Ellen Levine pThe Book is about when it was the 1950's to 1960's. A man named Martin Luther King Jr. was the leader for the blacks. White people were very mean to African-Americans. They had to use different schools, phone booths, neighborhoods, bathrooms, restaurants, hotels, and drinking fountains.p I like this book because I wonder about if I were there, would I have tried to help the black people? I know I would have. pI also think the illustrator did a great job on coloring the pages. I think the author wrote this book because it was about segregated laws. She wanted kids to know a famous leader or what it was like if the kids were there with him.

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

Excellent Introduction to Civil Rights for Elementary ages!, 2001-01-24
Whenever teachers in our predominantly white elementary school ask me to recommend a title pertaining to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., or to African American history, this is one of the first books I suggest for grades 4, 5 and 6.The question and answer format lends itself to reading aloud and then discussing topics that come up, like segregation, white supremacy, the Montgomery bus boycott, etc. I recently read part of this book to a fourth grade class who just had "segregation" as a vocabulary word. The students were quite attentive and asked some excellent questions.The title is a bit misleading in that some might view it as a biography of Dr. King. While many sections do draw upon personal events in Dr. King's life, such as when he was a youngster riding in the car with his father and he heard a police officer call his dad "boy." Or again, when he was young and he was told he could no longer play with his white friends. But as the title says, it's really about if you lived at the "time" of Dr. King. Therefore, it's an excellent introduction to many aspects of the Civil Rights movement.While the watercolor illustrations are an improvement over the black and white drawings in earlier editions of this "If You Lived At the Time Of" series, in this case I think the text could be more fully enhanced with actual photographs, especially since many of these illustrations are copied from well-known photographs.All in all, this is an excellent introduction to the Civil Rights Movement for upper-elementary students (and apparently for middle-school students according to another review here). This is one title that, in my opinion, should be in every elementary school in the nation. Recommended.