Rosa - by Nikki Giovanni (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

An inspiring account of an event that shaped American history

She had not sought this moment but she was ready for it. When the policeman bent down to ask "Auntie, are you going to move?" all the strength of all the people through all those many years joined in her. She said, "No."

Fifty years after her refusal to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, city bus, Mrs. Rosa Parks is still one of the most important figures in the American civil rights movement. This picture- book tribute to Mrs. Parks is a celebration of her courageous action and the events that followed.

Award-winning poet, writer, and activist Nikki Giovanni's evocative text combines with Bryan Collier's striking cut-paper images to retell the story of this historic event from a wholly unique and original perspective.

Rosa is a Caldecott Honor Book and the winner of the Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award.

Review Quotes

"Paired very effectively with Giovanni's passionate, direct words, Collier's large watercolor-and-collage illustrations depict Parks as an inspiring force that radiates golden light." --Booklist, Starred Review

"Purposeful in its telling, this is a handsome and thought-provoking introduction to these watershed acts of civil disobedience." --School Library Journal

"Giovanni and Collier offer a moving interpretation of Rosa Park's momentous refusal to give up her bus seat. The author brings her heroine very much to life...a fresh take on a remarkable historic event." --Publishers Weekly

"An essential volume for classrooms and libraries." --Kirkus Reviews

About the Author

Nikki Giovanni wrote many books of poetry for children and adults, including Rosa, a Caldecott Honor book, Lincoln and Douglass, The Genie in the Jar, and Ego-tripping and Other Poems for Young People. Giovanni called herself, "a Black American, a daughter, a mother, a professor of English." She was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, and grew up in Lincoln Heights, an all-black suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio. She studied at Fisk University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Columbia University. She published her first book of poetry, Black Feeling Black Talk, in 1968, and since then became one of America's most widely read poets. Oprah Winfrey named her as one of her twenty-five "Living Legends." Her autobiography Gemini was a finalist for the National Book Award, and several of her books received NAACP Image Awards. She received twenty-five honorary degrees, and numerous other distinctions, including being named Woman of the Year by Mademoiselle Magazine, The Ladies Home Journal and Ebony, the first recipient of the Rosa L. Parks Woman of Courage Award, and the Langston Hughes Medal for poetry. Nikki Giovanni lived in Christiansburg, Virginia, where she was a professor of English at Virginia Polytechnic Institute. She died in 2024 at the age of 81.

Bryan Collier is the author and illustrator of Uptown, winner of the Coretta Scott King Award and the Ezra Jack Keats Book Award. He is also the illustrator of the Caldecott Honor Books Martin's Big Words (Doreen Rappaport) and Rosa.