Mary Smartt 8/2/09

Papa's Mark by Gwendolyn Battle-Lavert and Colin Bootman ill. New York: Holiday House, 2003.

ISBN: 978-0-8234-1650-9

Annotation: A young boy’s father will be the first free man in his family to vote. He can only make his mark but wants to sign his name on the ballot. His young son helps him learn to write and his youthful expectations help the other men in town face their real fears about voting and they cast their votes too.

Media: oil on canvas

Curricular Connections: 5-8th grades: U.S, History, Civil Rights, Jim Crow Laws, Poll Tax

Rating: 4Q/4P

RAC 7.30.09

Papa's Mark, by Gwendolyn Battle-Lavert, ill. Colin Bootman. Holiday House, 2003.

Summary: Simms, an adolescent black boy living just after Emancipation, teaches his father to write his name so that he can sign his name on the register the first time he is allowed to vote.

Analysis: This is a very well-done book, intended for elementary students or read-alouds, but still appropriate for middle or high-school students studying that period of history. Papa is ashamed at not being able to write, and at first practices alone because he doesn't want to have to ask his son for help, but then they finally work on it together in a touching scene. Resistance to "colored" voting is alluded to many times, but this town doesn't have any problem with it, and the white shopkeeper openly congratulates Simms and his father on finally being able to vote. It isn't too utopian, though -- most of the other black men in the town don't want to go into the town hall with Papa until Simms speaks up and then they feel ashamed to stay home when a child is willing to go.

Illustrations: Beautiful full-page acrylic paintings with the text neatly incorporated along the sky or a road or other convenient stretch of emptiness. My only criticism is that Simms appears to be anywhere between eight and sixteen years old, so I'm not quite sure how old he's intended to be. It doesn't really matter, and I doubt I'd have noticed if I hadn't been reading it with a critical eye.

Rating: 5Q/4P

Curricular connections: A 5-8th grade unit on the civil rights movement, literacy, or elections. Combine it with books (picture or otherwise) that discuss challenges faced by blacks trying to vote.