Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

Evans returns to the spare, immediate text style and dramatic, evocative art employed in Underground (BCCB 2/11) to evoke the experience of traveling to the [End Page 253] nation’s capital and participating in the 1963 March on Washington, culminating in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech. The homely, personable specifics make epic history into a humanly accessible event: the hushed anticipation is palpable as the kids are roused by their parents in the pre-dawn dark (“The morning is quiet.// The sun rises// and we prepare// to march”) and tidied into their clothing, and King’s determinedly raised arm mirrors that of the young boy as he sits on his dad’s shoulders. Yet there’s an iconic flavor to the scenes, their streamlined compositions and simplified human figures standing in for the experience of many, their numbers brought home in closeups and broad views of the crowd swelling around the Reflecting Pool and the Lincoln Memorial. You’ll need to partner this with a more fact-based account of the march to give kids the meat of what’s going on here, but this will convey to them with impact what it was like to wake up in a quiet morning and march into history. A brief note offers more detail on the event.