JUST LIKE MARTIN

In his first novel, the actor and playwright plunges readers into the headiest days of the Civil Rights movement. Isaac, almost 14, is dismayed when his protective father refuses to let him join the great March on Washington; later, after the Young People's Bible Class at his church is bombed, he helps organize a children's march and sees his father beaten by police when the march is broken up. Davis shows how a local church could expand its role as community center to play a part in inspiring and guiding a national movement, inviting readers to consider the conflict between Isaac, who has embraced Martin Luther King's philosophy of nonviolence, and his father, who carries a pistol and promises to give as he receives. Despite witnessing racial violence and experiencing steady harassment from his peers, Isaac's convictions endure. He gets to meet his hero, Dr. King; in the end, his father, after Kennedy's assassination and some soul-searching, has a change of heart. Dramatic and simply told, with a cast of strong personalities. (Fiction. 11-13)