"WHITE SOCKS ONLY"

Coleman, E., & Cohn, S. (1996). White socks only. Morton Grove, Ill.: A. Whitman.

Storyline Online - Where Reading Is Fun! (n.d.). Retrieved January 23, 2015, from http://www.storylineonline.net/

Readability Lexile: AD630L

Target Audience: Ages 3-5

Setting: A porch in Mississippi

Theme: Discrimination

Characters: Grandma, a little girl, and their community.

Summary: White Socks Only is a flashback story told by a Grandma to a little girl. The grandma recounts her story about a trip into town on a hot summer day to see if she could fry on the sidewalk. The little girl hid the eggs under her clothes and one had broken. She was able to make it to town to crack one and see it fry. Because it was such a hot day and she was covered in eggs, she wanted a cool drink of water. She came upon a water fountain with a white only sign on it, so she took her shoes off and took a drink wearing her white socks. A white man came by and scolded the little girl. However, a woman from her church and other members of the Black community came up and supported her by drinking out of the fountain as well.

I like this book because it shows how people can band together and create change. I also like the subtle humor of the little girl taking off her shoes and using white socks. I also like the stock character sense that is created by the big white man and the Chicken man. There are problems with this book in that it makes it seem like it was easy to affect change in what was obviously a very racist community. We know that people had to work a lot harder and even gave their lives to create changes. Many of these racist viewpoints still exist.

I would use this book in my classroom as a read-aloud to display what can happen when people band together for any cause to change hearts and minds in their school, community, city, or state. There is classroom value in books like this. Because it deal with racism and overcoming stigmas, it meets the requirements of high quality literature set forth by Norton (2011).