Review: Ruth and the Green Book

Title: Ruth and the Green Book

Author: Calvin Alexander Ramsey

Illustrator: Floyd Cooper

Date completed: 1/14/2016

For the most part I don't read children's books, but as I have come to understand the lack of diversity in the book publishing world, I have started to make a point to read the ones I do come across.

While looking at a cool Green Book tool created by the NYPL labs earlier this week, I checked the library's catalog to see if our archive might have a copy of it. We did not, but we did have this children's book.

It's a cute story about a little girl and their family traveling from up North to Alabama to visit her grandmother. They discover the perils and hardships of African American travel in the 1950s and are turned away from a public restroom and a hotel when a friendly Esso station employee recommended they purchase a copy of the Green Book. They found a places where they were welcome to eat, sleep, and repair their car. At the end they finally made it to grandma's house.

There's a nice brief history on the last page of the Green Book. Probably be a great book to talk with your kids about issues of race and civil rights.