The 12 Books of #Diversity for the Holidays

Wow. It’s day six! Here’s a book for you: Lillian’s Right to Vote by Jonah Winter & Shane W. Evans.

An elderly African American woman, en route to vote, remembers her family’s tumultuous voting history in this picture book publishing in time for the fiftieth anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

As Lillian, a one-hundred-year-old African American woman, makes a “long haul up a steep hill” to her polling place, she sees more than trees and sky—she sees her family’s history. She sees the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment and her great-grandfather voting for the first time. She sees her parents trying to register to vote. And she sees herself marching in a protest from Selma to Montgomery. Veteran bestselling picture-book author Jonah Winter and Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award winner Shane W. Evans vividly recall America’s battle for civil rights in this lyrical, poignant account of one woman’s fierce determination to make it up the hill and make her voice heard.

What I love about this book is that, as a picture book, it tells the story in a way kids can receive it. Probably best for early elementary grade students but the symbolic way Lillian walks up the hill and sees her history is unmistakably brilliant and probably suitable for even younger kiddos. Kids will get it. Gentle language describing the often violent situations helps to soften the harshness of the historical events.

It’s so incredibly amazing.

I love this book so hard.

And Jonah is the bomb.