Addressing the importance of fairness and equality at a young age is crucial because only the developing generations can fully forklift the current system and rebuild one in which we pay more than simple lip service to the concept of opportunity.
There are too many vested in maintaining the status quo and they effectively use the ignorance of the people to scare and sway them into voting against their best interests. As such, the system continues to serve them at the expense of everyone else.
Children starving in America is an obscenity and an affront to everything we believe in. In a country where we have hundreds of billionaires and millions starving, children suffering because parents don’t have money for healthcare, the traditional path to improvement, higher education, being priced out of reach, locking in the cycle, we have to rely on the children. We have forfeited our autonomy.
And now, on to the books.
Written by Ethel Footman Smothers
Illustrated by John Holyfield
Emma Turner loves words and images but the Turners are migrant farmworkers, and extremely poor. As such, there is no money to buy Emma what she covets – a store-bought book.
The family is originally from Florida and the setting is mid-20th century. However, as they are currently working in a state where the school is integrated, she attends daily where there is full library available to her.
One wonders the talent we have squandered during this period and even today? How many children were there who held the answer to cancer, for example, or harbored the innate talents of expressive creations to change the world? The lack of access to education effectively silencing them and the entire world suffered. Where might we be now?
The illustrations are incredible. They are a gift to the eye. Bright primary colors contrasting with the deep richness of Emma’s skin and the pastoral surroundings of the farm provide an escape.