FREEDOM ON THE MENU

An ordinary African-American girl witnesses extraordinary events in this first-person account of the Greensboro sit-ins of 1960. Eight-year-old Connie lives in a segregated world where she can’t use the same public drinking fountains, bathrooms, movie theatres, swimming pools, and lunch counters as whites. Then one day everything changes. Four African-American college boys stage a sit-in at the local Woolworth’s lunch counter and Connie anxiously watches history unfold as her own brother and sister join the picketing and sit-ins and protest spreads throughout the South. A long six months later, Connie samples the sweet taste of freedom when she is served a banana split at the same lunch counter. Lagarrigue’s somber, somewhat impressionistic paintings capture the dignity and gravity of the times. This quietly moving story pays tribute to the peaceful protesters who did indeed “overcome.” (author’s note) (Picture book. 5+)