Abby Takes A Stand : 1960

While looking for items to bring to a family reunion with her grandchildren, Gee tells the story of what happened in 1960 in Nashville, Tennessee when she was 10 years old. What starts as a question by one of the grandchildren who has found a menu and asking why it was saved, Gee remembers why she saved a restaurants menu where the food was not all that good after all. A fantastic introduction to the world of sit-ins at restaurants and lunch counters and the world of segregation. At the end, a short time line is added as well as the rules of the sit-ins.

Why has their grandmother bothered keeping a menu from a restaurant that closed years ago, a restaurant that never served very good food in the first place? Three cousins listen to Gee's own story, set in the early days of lunch counter sit-ins in Nashville, a time when a black child could sit up front in a city bus but still could not get a milk shake at a downtown restaurant. Through the eyes of ten-year-old Abby, young readers see what it was like to live through those days, and they'll come to understand that, like a menu, freedom is about having choices. Each book in this series tells the story behind a different "scrap of time"; together they form a patchwork quilt of one black family's past that stretches back for generations.

Gordon C. James also illustrates the Scraps of Time series by Patricia C. McKissack. He lives in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Publisher: Puffin
Distributor: Penguin Group USA, Inc
Publication Date: 12-28-2006
Pages: 112
Measurements: 7.75in X 5.06in X 0.31in X 0.21lb