Ruth and the Green Book

 

I'd finished Night by Elie Wiesel on Thursday morning and I wanted a book to read Thursday night before bedtime, knowing that on Friday afternoon a friend was dropping off a book. I'd have that to read on Friday night.

I got into bed on Thursday night, opened Ruth and the Green Book on my Kindle, prepared to breeze through a picture book. I knew it was a picture book. But ... where were the words? I only saw pictures. Then I realized that I just couldn't see the writing on my black and white Paperwhite Kindle. I decided I'd have to try and read the book on my iPad on Friday morning. Of course, then I needed a book to read for Thursday night so I grabbed The Cookbook Club and started that. The book from my friend can wait.

Friday morning, iPad in hand, I  opened Ruth and the Green Book. I realized that the contrast of the writing against the illustrations made it nearly impossible for these old eyes to read. And maybe there is a way to increase the font of a picture book in the iPad but if there is, I couldn't figure it out. Enough about my trouble reading the book. I bet you want to hear about the book.

I was not impressed with Ruth and the Green Book. In my mind, it was fifth grade content written at a second grade level. When I saw the title of this picture book, I was intrigued. All I knew about the Green Book was what I'd learned after seeing the Academy Award winning "Green Book" in 2018. It would have been something I wished I'd known about when I was teaching fifth grade. I definitely would have taught about it. Victor Green, a postman, created The Negro Motorist Green Book in 1936 as a guidebook for African-American roadtrippers during the days of Jim Crow. It let travelers know where they could eat, sleep, get gas, all sorts of travel-related things in a time when most places would legally be able to deny them service. It was updated annually until shortly after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It started out covering just one part of the United States, but by the end of of its run, it covered, all of the US, Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean and Bermuda.

Ruth and her family leave Chicago on a road trip to visit Ruth's grandmother in Alabama. It was after the family's first stop, to gas up and take a restroom break, that Ruth realized something was amiss. She was not allowed to use the restroom at the service station. She learned it was for Whites only. The family spends that night sleeping in their car. They run into a kind person who shows them his Green Book and suggests that if they have to stop for gas, they should stop at an ESSO station. They follow the person's advice, stop for gas at ESSO and purchase a Green Book of their own. It becomes Ruth's job to study the Green Book so the family can know where to stay overnight, and eventually find out where they can get their car repaired when they break down on the road.

This had the potential to be a great story, but as I said, the reading level and the depth of the story was too simplistic for most fifth graders.