Tween Book Club - My Selma

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Program Type:

Book Clubs

Age Group:

Kids, Teens
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Program Description

About this event:

Readers ages 10-14 are welcome to join our Tween Book Club! Register to join and get a copy of the book - pick up at the Children's Desk at TCPL.

For February, we will read My Selma by Willie Mae Brown.

Registration is required as space is limited. Register online and receive a free copy of the book (we'll give you an email when the books are ready for pick up!). Book Club will meet in person in TCPL's Thaler/Howell room.

Plus, save the date for an in-person visit by the author Willie Mae Brown on February 28 at 6pm!

About the book (from the publisher):

Combining family stories of the everyday and the extraordinary as seen through the eyes of her twelve-year-old self, Willie Mae Brown gives readers an unforgettable portrayal of her coming of age in a town at the crossroads of history.

As the civil rights movement and the fight for voter rights unfold in Selma, Alabama, many things happen inside and outside the Brown family’s home that do not have anything to do with the landmark 1965 march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Yet the famous outrages which unfold on that span form an inescapable backdrop in this collection of stories. In one, Willie Mae takes it upon herself to offer summer babysitting services to a glamorous single white mother—a secret she keeps from her parents that unravels with shocking results. In another, Willie Mae reluctantly joins her mother at a church rally, and is forever changed after hearing Martin Luther King Jr. deliver a defiant speech in spite of a court injunction.

Infused with the vernacular of her Southern upbringing, My Selma captures the voice and vision of a fascinating young person—perspicacious, impetuous, resourceful, and even mystical in her ways of seeing the world around her—who gifts us with a loving portrayal of her hometown while also delivering a no-holds-barred indictment of the time and place.

 

Gift of the Charles and Phyllis Brodhead Endowed Book Fund