Abigail's Reviews > Martin's Big Words: The Life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

I have profoundly mixed feelings about this book. Feelings with which I have struggled, vacillating between a two and four star rating, alternately convinced that I was being petty, in my objections, and cowardly, in my reluctance to voice them. Martin's Big Words is, in so many ways, a lovely picture-book. Intended for younger children, it pairs Doreen Rappaport's brief narrative about the life of this great American hero with equally brief quotations from King's own speeches and writing. The accompanying collage and watercolor illustrations by Bryan Collier are simply gorgeous, well deserving of the Caldecott Honor and Coretta Scott King Award that they won. I would like to say that this was the ideal picture-book introduction, for young children, to the life and philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr. Unfortunately, I can't.

To understand why this book, and the way in which it portrays the Civil Rights Movement, from both a narrative and illustrative standpoint, bothers me so much, one needs to know a little bit about me. I am a white (or Euro-American) woman, raised by a progressive white man - a minister, who always described Rev. King as one of his great heroes. I grew up hearing the stories of my father's participation in the Civil Rights Movement, including the one in which he and many of his fellow seminarians, black and white, went south to join the great Selma to Montgomery Civil Rights March of 1965. They had a forty year reunion for all the CTS (Chicago Theological Seminary) students and faculty who marched, a few years back, and it turned out that it included almost the entire class! King's work, along with that of Mahatma Gandhi and the Rev. André Trocmé, had pride of place in my father's library, and I was keenly conscious, from an early age, that here was a man to be admired and emulated.

It feels almost churlish to argue with a book whose purpose is to promulgate the vision of Rev. King, when I agree so wholeheartedly with that vision, and have long admired the man himself. As it happens, my problem with Rappaport and Collier's book lies not in how they depict Martin Luther King, Jr., himself, but in how they depict the larger Civil Rights Struggle. The trouble begins when Rappaport writes: "In the next ten years, black Americans all over the South protested for equal rights. Martin walked with them and talked with them and prayed with them. White ministers told them to stop. Mayors and governors and police chiefs and judges ordered them to stop. But they kept on marching." All of which is true, of course. Black Americans did protest for equal rights, often showing great courage and determination, in the face of violent persecution. Martin Luther King was certainly there, constantly lending his support, his encouragement, and his spiritual guidance to those who needed it. And yes, many white authority figures, including ministers, were opposed to the changes that civil rights activists sought.

But that isn't the whole story, is it? In reality, many white Americans were also civil rights activists - and yes, a great many of them ministers or priests - often adding their voices, and their presence, to the struggle for justice. I'm not suggesting that it was their struggle, or that their experiences should somehow be paramount. Far from it! But they too are part of the story, and it strikes me as odd that Rappaport seems to be deliberately excluding them from that story. Equally disturbing is the way in which Collier's illustration, for the two-page spread which contains this passage, also works to exclude white activists. His artwork is clearly inspired by Steve Schapiro's famous photograph from the Selma to Montgomery march. This image, in which an American flag, as well as a mostly obscured United Nations flag, is carried by marchers on the long trek, shows a diverse group - most black, but a few white - trudging determinedly along. Every time I see it, I think of my father, and what he must have experienced and felt, walking along that same road. Was he in front of this particular group? Somewhere behind? Did he know anyone in this photograph? Did he meet them, in the course of the march? I've never thought to ask. My father isn't in this photograph, but he could have been. That is to say, he could have been in real life. But not in Rappaport's narrative, nor in Collier's art, which depicts the same scene, with all non-African-American marchers removed:



Now this is one two-page spread, and I imagine that some would argue that it isn't that important. I read an excellent review of Martin's Big Words which, although it agreed that the narrative and artistic choices made here were "odd," argued that there were already so many positive images of whites, in our children's books, that the absence of one in this book wasn't so important. I can't deny that there is some truth to this. Does it really matter that this single picture-book promotes the idea that blacks struggled alone, in their fight for equality, against universal white opposition, when the reality is so much more complicated and rich?

My answer to that question comes when I think of my father, lying in a hospital bed as I write this. If I had children, would I want to introduce them to the life and work of Martin Luther King, Jr. with a book that wrote their grandfather out of history? Would I want to use such a book to introduce any child to this important topic? Sadly, the answer has to be no. Beautiful and effective, in communicating its message, Martin's Big Words has significant flaws, and I would only recommend its use in conjunction with some other work on King, and the Civil Rights Movement.

Addendum: since writing the above review, back in 2011, I have had the chance to think about these issues further, and to consider my rating of this book, which originally stood at three stars - a compromise between the four stars I thought it deserved for its aesthetic qualities, and the two it deserved for its simplification of history. My father, mentioned above, has since passed away, but I remain immensely proud of his participation in this important moment in American history. I was reminded of this book recently, and of my mixed feelings about it, after watching a video online of a group discussion of race. The discussion took place in the UK, and concerned public perceptions in that country of Meghan Markle. One young participant, who was the sole African-American (or American of any kind) in the group, vociferously objected at one point to the idea that there were any white participants in the Civil Rights Movement here in the states, and nothing any of the other participants said could convince her she was mistaken. Watching her objections, I was struck by the oddity of the situation: here was the lone American in the room, having the least accurate knowledge of American history! When I considered why that might be, this book came floating up in my memory, and while there is simply no way of knowing whether this young lady ever encountered it, it certainly represents the kind of oversimplification that might, if reproduced in enough texts and images, create such an incorrect impression. Given that this is so, I realized that I simply couldn't dismiss Martin's Big Words as misguided, in this respect. It is, when taken together with other works of its kind, harmful. I have therefore reduced my star rating, with regret, from three to two.