America Dreaming: How Youth Changed America in the 60's

Laban Carrick Hill
Little, Brown Young Readers (2007)
ISBN 9780316009041
Reviewed by Dylan James (age 11) for Reader Views (12/07)

This book has a lot of short stories about fascinating history in the 40s, 50s, 60s, and even the 70s. It is mainly about black people trying to get their rights and kids becoming hippies. It has very intriguing stories about what happened when black people became fed up with how whites treated them.  This book has at least 20 different stories about when black people would not follow the unfair rules that white people made for them.

Even though the author mentions angry white men beating up and killing black people who were protesting (no pictures) a few times, this book is fine for boys and girls ages 9 and up.  It would help if kids who want to read this book know a little bit about American history (specifically the Civil Rights movement) before reading this book.

Even people who normally do not like history will like the stories (helped a little by the great pictures), and people who like history will like this more than a regular history book (helped by the book having unusually interesting history).

The writing was pretty good, but there were a couple of parts where the sentences were hard to understand – it was hard to understand what the author meant.  The only thing the author needs to improve on is more explanation of stuff like: Why did it happen? How did it happen?  That is really the only thing that jumped out at me about this book.

My favorite part of this book was the moment that black people got their rights because it’s a happy ending and because the writing right at that point was terrific.  I do not normally like history books and I was very engrossed in “America Dreaming.”

Make comment on weblog