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.

Necessary Lies

 

I'm somehow surprised that this 2013 historical fiction novel, Necessary Lies by Diane Chamberlain, wasn't on really my radar. When I finished American Dirt, I needed another book to read since nothing on hold had come in, browsed the library website for what was available and came across this one. Apparently it was kind of sort of on my radar since I had added it to my "want to read" list on goodreads. 

I'd read two other Diane Chamberlain novels. Pretending to Dance which I read for my community book club and The Stolen Marriage which I didn't like quite as much, but in this time of coronavirus, I think about it often.

What a story! Apparently well into the 1970s, there was a eugenics program in North Carolina. Yes, you read that right. Until the 1970s, a board selected people that they felt shouldn't reproduce and they sterilized them. Most other states abandoned the practice shortly after WWII because it was too closely associated with Nazi Germany.

Necessary Lies is the story of young, idealistic social worker, Jane, and some of her clients. Jane takes over from another social worker although her training is cut short  when the woman training her falls and breaks her leg. We meet Jane's clients, some of the people who live and work on the Gardiner tobacco farm. It's the Jim Crow south.

Necessary Lies is also the story of 15-year old Ivy Hart. After her father's death and her mother's commitment, she lives with her grandmother, her 17-year old sister, and her sister's 2-year old son. Her grandmother has diabetes and is not aging well. She's not up to the task of raising Ivy, Mary Ella or Baby William. Mary Ella is "feeble-minded" and Baby William is most likely following in his mother's footsteps. The task of running their sharecroppers home on the Gardiner farm is up to  Ivy who is dealing with epilepsy. 

Jane gets a little overly involved with the Hart family which causes problems in her new marriage as well as problems at work.

Not great literature but wow, what a story! At times I had to stop and think. Wait! This was happening in the 1960? Unimaginable. I'd highly recommend.