This book is not about troubled waters: It is the cry of the troubled waters themselves — the waters of the Alabama River — as they relay to us all that they have seen. The river itself is such a powerful, central character that in one page spread we view civil-rights marchers on Bloody Sunday meeting the "chilling sight" of "state troopers in gas masks and hard hats" (feeling strangely reminiscent of current-era events); then the page opens up and folds down to show not only the horrific attack that follows but also the depths of the river which, as Caldecott honoree Bryan Collier explains in a note at the end, "contains souls that release their sphere of truth as evidence."
You may ask, "How can this be a book for four-to-eight-year-old readers?" The answer is that children understand the dark side of the world — as well as its depths of courage — in a more raw, real way than many adults. They deserve to have the truth told as only a river can tell it. And so the Alabama River here starts gently, telling how its 318 miles meander from Montgomery to Mobile, with its current coursing for millions of years, before it starts to tell the stories of the Choctaw people, the European settlers, and "ships bearing Africans into bondage." It describes the Trail of Tears, enslavement, the Civil War, sharecropping: all with Collier's portrayals of faces full of dignity, defiance, and resilience. This leads up to the story of the March 7, 1965 march to the steel-arched Pettus Bridge and the tale of the days that followed, in which "the tide could not be turned back."
Throughout, the powerful language of Newbery Honoree Carole Boston Weatherford lets the river speak its honest observations, of brutality, yes, but even more so of "the rising tide of resistance" that "did not ebb, even under threat of death." In the pages we find not only the history but also relevant lines from spirituals:
Oh, wasn't that a wide river.
Wade in the water. Wade in the water, children.
Gonna lay down my burden down by the riverside.
The book ends with a timeline of history along the Alabama River and a powerful Note from the Illustrator, offering quotes from Dr. Martin Luther King that guided his art:
"Truth crushed to earth will rise."
"No lie can live forever."
"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."
This book deserves to elevate Carole Boston Weatherford and Bryan Collier from their status as honorees to Newbery and Caldecott award winners. It a book about history, true, and it is just as much a book for our times and for the courage we need.
