The Oldest Student by Rita Lorraine Hubbard

The Autobiography of Malcolm X makes it clear that when he was in jail he learned to love to read and through it developed his political philosophy. I also just read Anti-Racist Baby, which I found didactic, and then I read The Oldest Student, and I thought: Now THIS is an anti-racist book, to illustrate how one form of white supremacism surely worked in this country and show one way to begin to counter it, through reading and writing. Not really a kids' book, but I liked the story and the art was really unique.ĭave: 4 stars. Harry (15): 3.5 stars, I liked that she finally learned how to read and flew like the birds. The remarkable thing here is not that she learned to read, but that she didn’t feel like she had a chance to learn to read until she was 114! She was fighting for economic survival all her life! But she did, and read a lot until she died at 121 (still able to see and hear well enough, and hold a pencil to write with, and walk still only with the aid of a cane).

literacy can be power, and not just merely decoding words. This is the inspirational story of Mary Walker, born a slave in 1848, freed at fifteen and, like most slaves, deliberately denied the right to read and write because, as you know. That's why they don't want us reading.' -Nightjohn We get to wanting and when we get to wanting it's bad for them. 'To know things, for us to know things, is bad for them. The Oldest Student is book #2 (of 20) of 2020. Each year my family reads all the Goodreads-award-nominated picture books.

The Oldest Student by Rita Lorraine Hubbard