A Bus Of Our Own

A Bus Of Our Own

Written by Freddi Williams Evans

Illustrated by Shawn Costello

Zaner-Bloser, 2001

38 pages

Histoical Fiction

      This book was recommended to me by my CT. The main character is a little girl named Mable Jean who desperately wants to go to school. Black children con't have a bus to ride so it is a five mile walk to school. Mable Jean starts to inquire about a bus for them to ride. Her mother and daddy can't ask or they may "make trouble" and fear of getting kicked off the land. A cousin of theirs is able to buy two buses and has enough parts to make one of them run! They all work as a community to fix the bus up!

      The illustrations will break your heart! Mable Jean is so precious! The pictures are done in watercolors, I believe. They are very dream-like and the colors are soft and warm. They add to the story so much! If you couldn't see the emotion in this little girls face it wouldn't have the same impact!

      There aren't very many small communtities like this anymore, so you could talk to your students about what that would be like. What do they think it would be like? If I was using this book in my classroom, I would definitley talk about Brown vs. Board of Education. You usually don't learn about that until highschool, but I think that the older grades could handle that sort of discussion.