Midnight Without a Moon - by Linda Williams Jackson (Paperback)

About the Book

Rose Lee Carter, an African-American girl, dreams of life beyond the Mississippi cotton fields during the summer of 1955. Her world is rocked when an African-American boy, Emmett Till, is killed for allegedly whistling at a white woman. A powerful middle-grade debut perfect for readers who enjoyed The Watsons Go to Birmingham and Brown Girl Dreaming.

Book Synopsis

"A powerful story." --Kirkus Reviews It's Mississippi in the summer of 1955, and Rose Lee Carter can't wait to move north. For now, she's living with her sharecropper grandparents on a white man's cotton plantation. Then, one town over, an African American boy, Emmett Till, is killed for allegedly whistling at a white woman. When Till's murderers are unjustly acquitted, Rose realizes that the South needs a change and that she should be part of the movement. Linda Jackson's moving debut seamlessly blends a fictional portrait of an African American family and factual events from a famous trial that provoked change in race relations in the United States.

Review Quotes

Washington Post 2017 KidsPost Summer Book Club selection! New York Public Library Best Books for Kids! "Jackson pulls no punches in the characters' heated discussions and keeps dialogue raw and real..." --Bulletin "Jackson's debut does an excellent job dramatizing the injustice that was epidemic in the pre-civil rights South and capturing the sounds and sensibilities of that time and place. Her sympathetic characters and their stories will make this thoughtful book especially good for classroom use." --Booklist "A powerful story." --Kirkus "This nuanced coming-of-age story by a debut author is deftly delivered, with engaging characters set against a richly contextualized backdrop of life for African Americans during the Jim Crow era. It's also an authentic work of historical fiction...about a pivotal incident in the civil rights movement." --Horn Book "An unflinching and sensitively-told coming-of-age story from the perspective of a smart and thoughtful young girl in 1950s Mississippi." --SLJ "Midnight Without a Moon offers readers an unflinching bird's eye view of 1955 Mississippi. Young Rose Lee has one foot steeped in the segregated South and the other in the new world where Negroes and girls are expecting more, doing more, and willing to risk all to live lives of their own choosing. Bravo to Jackson, for a magnificent piece of writing!" --Sharon G. Flake, Coretta Scott King Award winning author of Unstoppable Octobia May and The Skin I'm In "Rose shines bright in the darkness -- brave, beautiful, and full of hard-won hope. She'll be an inspiration to every reader who meets her, as she has been to me." -Caroline Starr Rose, author of May B and Blue Birds --

About the Author

Linda Jackson was born in a small town in Mississippi and likes to write about unassuming, everyday characters in small-town settings. She still lives in Mississippi with her husband and children.