Book: Separate is Never Equal:Sylvia Méndez and Her Family's Fight for Desegregation
Author: Duncan Tonatiuh
Publisher: Abrams Books for Young Readers
Publication Date:2014
Age Range: K-3
Lexile Reading Level: 870
This book tells the little known story of Sylvia Méndez and her family’s experience with segregation in the California school system in the 1940s. Many people are aware of the Brown vs. Board of Education trial that declared segregation as unconstitutional and that was almost 10 years after this book’s story. The story starts with Sylvia as a young girl starting a new school where she is getting picked on for the color for her skin. An American citizen of Mexican and Puerto Rican heritage who spoke and wrote perfect English, Mendez was denied enrollment to a “Whites only” school. Sylvia’s parents took action by organizing with their community and filing a lawsuit in the federal district court. The end result was an end to the era of segregated education in California.
This is a good book to read to young children because it demonstrates through its straightforward narrative how there was an injustice in the school system and then the family fights back when they keep asking “But why?”.
It’s important to instruct kids how they can make a difference if they fight for what they believe is wrong like how the Méndez family fought back after being mistreated for the color of their skin. This story deserves to be more widely known and thanks to Duncan Tonatiuh, hopefully this story will be.
This book definitely needs to be apart of the collection since this story is so unknown to the majority of the public. This is the only children’s picture book about the Méndez family and their fight to end segregation in the California school system. Also a lot of books about segregation during this time period is about African Americans in the South. So putting this book in the collection gives some additional perspective to the long and arduous struggle for equality. As the education specialists in the trial argued, the segregation of children creates feelings of superiority in one group and inferiority in another.
I liked the way that Tonatiuh organized this book by putting a flashback in the beginning of the book to tell the story. You could ask children about or explain the concept of flashbacks after reading the book aloud. An additional resource you would be able to add is the following video Voices of History: Sylvia Méndez.
Awards
Américas Award Winner 2015
Pura Belpré Award, Honor, Illustrator 2015
Tomás Rivera Mexican American Children’s Book Award 2015
IRA Notable Books for a Global Society Winner 2015
NCTE Orbis Pictus Honor Book 2015
Robert F. Sibert Medal, Honor Book 2015
ALA Notable Books for Children, Middle Readers 2015
Jane Addams Award Winner, Young Readers 2015
SLJ Best Books, Nonfiction 2014
Kirkus Reviews Best Books of 2014, Picture Books
Center for the Study of Multicultural Children’s Literature, Best Multicultural Books of 2014
New York Public Library, 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing, Nonfiction 2014
Cybils Awards Finalist, Nonfiction for Elementary & Middle Grades 2014
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