Chapter Book 3

A.    Author: Mildred D. Taylor

B.     Title: Mississippi Bridge

C.     Illustrator: Max Ginsburg

D.    Readability: 5.9

E.     Genre: General Nonfiction

F.      Subgenre: Diversity

G.    Theme: Character and Values, Friendship

H.    Primary and secondary characters: Jeremy Simms  

I.       Award(s) date of publication:  

J.       Publishing company: Bantam Skylark

K.    ISBN number:0-553-15992-5

L.     Brief summary : Mississippi Bridge by Mildred D. Taylor is a wonderful story of a boys fight to overcome racism. Jeremy watches every week as the bus passes through the town. Jeremy sees his father and the other whites treating the blacks all poorly, he dispises the idea that the race had to be treated as low class. Upon the bus, Josias and Big Ma had to sit in back since whites got the closest seats to the front. As Jeremy and the children of Big Ma leave, they are challenged with crossing the Mississippi bridge, one that was made before the civil war, it had very little to prove it was stable. Just as Jeremy returned to the store, he found that the bus driver was kicking off the blacks because a white family wanted to go somewhere instead. The bus sped off and went right into the river. Josias jumped into the water to rescue the families, Jeremy ran to the store. People lost their lives that day, but it showed that color didn’t matter when  saving someone.

M.   Description of how you would use the book with students: This book would be used to teach students about diversity and how it affects not only the African American’s but the children as well. This book would be useful when talking about history as well.