Set in the segregated South, this handsome picture book takes young readers into the world of Jim Crow as Michael, an African American boy and his grandmother wait for a bus and sit on bench until a white boy and his mother arrive and Michael and Grandma must get up and give them the seats. When the bus finally arrives they must go to the back of a bus and when they get off both boys race for the water fountains-one marked colored and one marked white. For Michael, the idea that the white water must be better becomes a gnawing obsession that leads him to dare to taste the forbidden 'white water' and discover that the water from both come from the same pipe. It is a discovery that changes the way he thinks about himself and the segregated world that treated him as a second-class person. In telling and showing the conditions of that time and place, White Water may shock young readers of today, but it manages to capture so many of the affronts that were part of life in the south.

Age: Early School Years, Later School Years. Award Year: 2011. Click here to purchase the product on Amazon.com.