Civil rights kept me up until the wee hours.....

The Lions of Little Rock by Kristen Levine came highly recommended, and that worried me.  I have often found that I am disappointed when I expect too much.  I must admit, as I started the story, I thought it this would disappoint.  It is told from the point of Marlee, a thirteen-year-old girl living in Little Rock in 1958.  She is afraid of heights and terrified of speaking....period.  In fact, her older sister challenges her to say 5 words, in complete sentences, on her first day of school.   Marlee surprises herself by not only accomplishing it, but by doing so in meeting the new girl, Elizabeth.  Elizabeth seems to be all that Marlee isn't:  funny, talkative, engaging.  And yet, they become best friends.  This is the point when I worry the book won't live up to the hype.  It seemed like a girly sort of friendship book.

Luckily, history takes over and the book lives up to the hype.  1958 is called "The Lost Year" in Little Rock.  It was a year in which none of the public high schools opened to protest the forced integration that the federal government had imposed the previous year when the "Little Rock Nine," nine black students, had attended an all-white public school.  Marlee's older sister is left home while Marlee attends Junior High.  Soon, her family, and her friendship with Elizabeth is thrown into the escalating conflict over integration.  Unable to watch the unfair discrimination she witnesses, Marlee finds her voice, risking not only her newly found friendship, but also her safety.

It is a story about standing up for what is right, even when it scares you.  And, it also deals realistically with the consequences of such bravery.  I literally couldn't put it down....finishing it in one late-night reading marathon.