Susan E. Goodman

"This is New York City."
But a modern view of skyscrapers gives way to the smaller buildings and cobblestone streets of 175 years ago...to the houses of New Amsterdam 350 years ago...to the Lenape people hunting in forests 400 years ago...to a woolly mammoth wandering rocky hills 15,000 years ago...and back, and back, and back, through the time of the dinosaurs, to 540 million years ago.
"Things change....the earth changes....Our world - and the way we live in it - will continue changing."… (more)

Over 100 years before Brown vs. Board of Education, there was Roberts vs. City of Boston, in which Sarah Roberts' parents sued to allow her to attend the closest public school - a whites-only school. The Massachusetts Supreme Court decided against the Roberts family, saying that segregated schools were legal; yet Roberts made a petition and collected so many signatures that in 1855, Boston integrated its schools.

Beautiful gouache and watercolor illustrations evoke both the history of the time period and the humanity of the people involved.

Back matter: Timeline (1848-2014), What Happened to Our Heroes? (Robert Morris, Charles Sumner, Benjamin Roberts, Sarah Roberts), Sources and Resources, Author's Note

See also: Free to Learn by Cynthia Levinson; I Am Ruby Bridges… (more)