Evicted! The Struggle for the Right to Vote by Alice Faye Duncan and Charly Palmer - OPTIONAL

Evicted! The Struggle for the Right to Vote by Alice Faye Duncan, illustrated by Charly Palmer. NON-FICTION PICTURE BOOK. Calkins Creek (Boyds Mill), 2022. $19. 9781684379798

BUYING ADVISORY: EL, MS, HS - OPTIONAL

AUDIENCE APPEAL: AVERAGE

In the 1960s, in Tennessee, when Black people went to register to vote, they were evicted from the homes in retaliation. Undaunted, they started registering in greater numbers. Many of them found refuge in large-scale tents erected on donated land. Duncan gives us a look into another facet of the voting rights movement in the 1960’s.

While formatted like a picture book, each page is dense with information about Tennessee’s Tent City and the movement towards the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which is under attack in our present day. Duncan has not written a simple book meant for a quick read aloud. If students will read it on their own, it would be most useful in a middle school or high school that have enthusiastic teachers who cover the time period and issues. Palmer’s illustrations have depth and motion, and would delight any art teacher, too. I have to rate it OPTIONAL, because of the incongruity of the format with the dense text; it will be hard to find teachers and students who will embrace it outside of classroom use.

Cindy, Library Teacher, MLS