Freedom Summer (book)
Encyclopedia
Freedom Summer is a children's book written by Deborah Wiles
Deborah Wiles
Deborah Wiles is an award-winning children's book author. Her second novel, Each Little Bird That Sings, was a 2005 National Book Award finalist.-Personal life:...

 and illustrated by Jerome Lagarrigue
Jerome Lagarrigue
Jerome Lagarrigue is an award-winning French painter and illustrator. His illustrating and painting work ranges from boxing scenes to children's books.-Biography:...

. Originally published as a hardcover edition in 2002, the book is now available as a paperback from Simon & Schuster
Simon & Schuster
Simon & Schuster, Inc., a division of CBS Corporation, is a publisher founded in New York City in 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. It is one of the four largest English-language publishers, alongside Random House, Penguin and HarperCollins...

. There is also a 2010 book by Bruce Watson by the same name, but this one is written for adults.

Summary

The set is in Mississippi during the summer of 1964, a summer of desegregation in the South, the book is about two best friends. John Henry is black and Joe is white. They do everything together, such as swimming in a creek. They cannot swim in the town pool together because blacks are not allowed to use the public swimming pool.

Joe is then told that a law has been passed that blacks can do everything that whites can do. He is really excited because this means that he can go to the town pool tomorrow with John Henry. The boys are more excited than ever before but when they arrive at the town pool the following day, they are in shock because the town pool has been closed. The entire pool has been filled with black sticky disgusting tar as white people rather close down the entire pool instead of sharing it with black people. They did not want these people to have their own lives so they turned them down. No voting for them.

The boys are heavily disappointed and the book ends with the two boys entering a grocery store which was previously for whites only.

Awards

Illustrator Jerome Lagarrigue won the John Steptoe Award for New Talent for this book. In 2002 the book won the Ezra Jack Keats
Ezra Jack Keats
Ezra Jack Keats , Caldecott-winning author of The Snowy Day, was one of the most important children's literature authors and illustrators of the 20th Century....

 Award for best new picture book
Picture book
A picture book combines visual and verbal narratives in a book format, most often aimed at young children. The images in picture books use a range of media such as oil paints, acrylics, watercolor and pencil.Two of the earliest books with something like the format picture books still retain now...

writer of the year and best new illustrator.
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