2nd Period Language Arts discussion

Curtis,Christoper. The Watson's Go to Birmingham .New York, Yearling Newbery

"The Watson's Go to Birmingham" is a historical-fiction book that took place in the 1960s during the segregation part of time. The story is based off of how the southern part of the U.S. was during this part of time. The main character in this book is Kenny. He is the middle child of the Watson's, and he tells the story as it unfolds. The Watson kids are very troubled throughout this book, so their parents decided to take them down to the south to stay with their grandma for the summer. They didn't realize how good they had it until they saw how colored folks lived in the south. For example,"We'd seen the pictures of a bunch of really mad white people with twisted-up faces screaming and giving dirty finger signs to some little Negro kids who were trying to go to school. I'd seen the pictures but I didn't really know how these white people could hate some kids so much." (Curtis176) The kids were so used to living the free life up in Michigan, so it was almost like a wake-up call for them to see how different life was in the south. Overall, I think the main theme of this story is to be thankful for what you have because you could be living way worse.

Nice and well written. Makes me want to read this book myself!