Customer Reviews

. . . If You Lived at the Time of Martin Luther King

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Whenever teachers in our predominantly white elementary school ask me to recommend a title pertaining to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., or to African American history, this is one of the first books I suggest for grades 4, 5 and 6.The question and answer format lends itself to reading aloud and then discussing topics that come up, like segregation, white supremacy, the Montgomery bus boycott, etc. I recently read part of this book to a fourth grade class who just had "segregation" as a vocabulary word. The students were quite attentive and asked some excellent questions.The title is a bit misleading in that some might view it as a biography of Dr. King. While many sections do draw upon personal events in Dr. King's life, such as when he was a youngster riding in the car with his father and he heard a police officer call his dad "boy." Or again, when he was young and he was told he could no longer play with his white friends. But as the title says, it's really about if you lived at the "time" of Dr. King. Therefore, it's an excellent introduction to many aspects of the Civil Rights movement.While the watercolor illustrations are an improvement over the black and white drawings in earlier editions of this "If You Lived At the Time Of" series, in this case I think the text could be more fully enhanced with actual photographs, especially since many of these illustrations are copied from well-known photographs.All in all, this is an excellent introduction to the Civil Rights Movement for upper-elementary students (and apparently for middle-school students according to another review here). This is one title that, in my opinion, should be in every elementary school in the nation. Recommended.

I read this book to my middle school students every year. Levine explains the need for a civil rights movement in terms that kids can understand. This book makes students want to learn more about this important event in American history.

Reason for Reading: Read aloud to ds as part of our history curriculum.

As with all "If You..." books, the book is presented in a series of questions and answers which progress naturally from a beginning point to an ending. After the brief introduction which leads us up to the plight of the black people in the US in the fifties and sixties the book starts with the question "What was segregation?" This is a very thorough book which looks at the Civil Rights Movement from the earliest rumblings of the brave lone men and woman who took a stand by sitting on a bus in the white section or sitting in diners for white people all the way through to Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination and modern day prejudice. Though the book's title refers to MLK, this is not a biography of him and he is not mentioned until well into the book. Of course once he is mentioned then he and the movement become inseparable, but the book is about the times first.

My son was very interested in this book, and with us being Canadians this was the first time he had heard about this topic in such depth. Of course, we have come across the subject in our readings to date and I've discussed it with him but this book really brought the reality of the situation, mostly in the Southern US, to life for him. He was plain outright flabbergasted at the "whites only" and "no coloreds" signs that were posted everywhere and everything that was actually involved with segregation. It was a real eye opener for him that a world like this once existed and we tried to imagine what it would be like for us today if we were out in the world with so many rules against what we were allowed to do and where we could go and he found it near impossible. He is glad that Canada is a free country and that we were a welcome destination for the slaves back in those days. (from previous studies) This book definitely made an impact on him and I personally was well pleased with it, also.

This is a great book for an introduction to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for my 11 and 10 year old.

If you lived at the time of Martin Luther King J r.
By Ellen Levine

The Book is about when it was the 1950's to 1960's. A man named Martin Luther King Jr. was the leader for the blacks. White people were very mean to African-Americans. They had to use different schools, phone booths, neighborhoods, bathrooms, restaurants, hotels, and drinking fountains.

I like this book because I wonder about if I were there, would I have tried to help the black people? I know I would have.

I also think the illustrator did a great job on coloring the pages. I think the author wrote this book because it was about segregated laws. She wanted kids to know a famous leader or what it was like if the kids were there with him.

Martin Luther King Made the Black and white people be together and I wish I was there to help Martin Luther King. I wish I could of met him. When I was reading this , it felt like if I was there and seeing white people hurting black people's feelings. If I was one of the black people hearing the insults I would try to change it like Martin Luther King. I would recommend this book to all people so they could learn about his changes.

Last night, my wife Kathy and I watched the second debate in the United States 2008 presidential election and there were some black people in the audience. When one of the older black people walked up to Barack Obama after it was over and had their picture taken with him, I turned to Kathy and said, "Just think what she must be thinking, she is old enough to remember segregation and now it looks like a black man will be president."
Young people are heavily favoring Obama, yet they really do not know much about how in the recent past it was difficult to impossible for black people to vote or even execute their rights. This book, written for the person in late elementary school, is a brief yet reasonably thorough explanation of the plight of blacks and the civil rights movement. This movement was much later coming that it should have been; yet when it did it was unstoppable. As is made clear in this book, not even the pain of death was enough to keep the dedicated people from marching and speaking out against the ills of racism.
Now that the country is poised to elect Barack Obama president, we can look at it with pride. However, we must never forget the pain and suffering that was endured in getting to this point, which makes this book so valuable as a historical retrospective on how we got here.

This is a perfect read for those middle grade elementary school students. It has a just-right balance of text, information about ML King and illustrations.