Papa's Mark Book

Personal Reaction:
This book tells the story of an African American who finally gets the chance to vote. The only obstacle he faces are the literacy tests that white males who were against equal rights enacted to prevent African Americans from voting. The father finally learns to read and write thanks to his son who taught him so that he could be one of the first African American men to vote in the south. I really enjoyed the history and the story in this book. It taught not only about the common African Americans' struggle to vote for the first time, but also touched on the theme of the importance of knowledge and writing. The detailed illustrations help the reader imagine what times were like during this time and really makes this book a great picture book.

Purposes:
This picture book would be great for a 2nd-4th grade classroom. By doing a read aloud with this book, you could have discussions at different parts in the story about some of the questionable sentence structure that represents the time that this book is portraying. The vocabulary throughout the story is a little different as well. The father at one point calls his first writing attempt, chicken scratch. As a teacher you would have to explain to the class that this was a saying at that time. There is actually some really good figurative language where similes are used ("The wind howled like a blare of bugles"). In the author's note, it goes into more detail about the 13th amendment (Abolition) and the 15th amendment (right to vote for African Americans). This would be a great refreshment for a teacher so that they could build lessons that formulate discussions which could evolve into a research project over African American history. This would be a great read right before a time of voting or in February during Black History Month.