Back of the Bus

Author: Aaron Reynolds; Illustrated by Flyod Copper

Title: Back of the Bus
Medium: Oil Color

Genre: Contemporary Reality Fiction 

Theme: This book is meant to show the readers a child's perceptive right before the start of Civil Rights Movement

Summary: The book is about a young man, who was riding in the back of the bus with his mother, when he had heard the commotions among the passersby and he chose to ignore it at first. But as the situation aboard the bus has escalated  he begin to become more curious about what has happened. The boy have a marble in his hands and he seems fixated on it, so he created his own world within the marble itself to escape the reality. 

Literary Elements: The setting of this book is abased on Montgomery, Alabama, the birthplace of Civil Rights Movement. The story itself is mainly focused around the young boy who is raiding in the bus with his mother. The pages has showed people's facial emotions as the situation has been escalating through the book. The whole story has a sense of poetry in its dialogues because there was several rhymes on each pages. The pages itself was illustrated to focus on one person, the young boy. As the story goes on, the pages has been broaden out to show the others. The characters in this book was being focused on whenever they were mentioned directly and the pages will be showed with this individuals and put a significant impression on this person. Every pages has been able to convey the feelings and to create the atmospheres where readers can probably related to if they were placed in the similar situation.

Evaluation: The concepts and ideas behind this story is really excellent for readers to be able to create a connection with the characters with the story. It can also be used to expand the reader's curiosity about why would this situation has occurred  This will encourages the readers to reach out and try to find out more about the story and the reasons behind it. The illustrations are very nice, because it was successful in creating an image for readers to look at and being able to find a way to compressed  to the level where they can find the similar situations that has occurred around them on daily basis. So the readers can feel like they understood what was going on around them. 

Social Justice Element: This book signify the point of view of a child who has witnessed the pivotal event in the history, which has spring forward the birth of Civil Rights Movements. This has also showed us that readers can learn from this and be aware of what has happened which lead the whole America to this point. Our society has frowned upon racism/oppression for many years now. But sadly, there is always a underlying issue that are going around, but this book has served to reminded us of how far we had came from. 

Classroom Activity: I would present this book to 2nd/3rd graders, because I felt that at that age, they are old enough to questions the intentions behind the actions of characters in this book. This book can enabled me to engaged into a group discussion with the students. The group discussion is aimed to reveal more information about how some of issues are still there and the students should be aware of what consequences it has brought. This way, the students will be able to learn about how they could treat the others regardless of their skin colors/quirks.