DON'T RIDE THE BUS ON MONDAY: The Story of Rosa Parks

Seven-year-old Rosa was so excited she bounced as she walked"" on her first day of school -- but she was disappointed on arrival with the shabby condition of the black children's school house. And sad later on when the white teacher announced that ""you children are lucky your ancestors were brought to this country as slaves so you could be civilized."" As an adult Rosa Parks worked on voter registration for the NAACP before her famous refusal to give up her seat to a white passenger touched off the 381-day Montgomery bus boycott. As the above summary might indicate, Meriwether's pedestrian telling has none of the incisive vitality that distinguished June Jordan's Fannie Lou Hamer (1356, J-474), but her subject has enough intrinsic interest to carry readers along and to justify making a place for this among the younger biographies.