Audio Book - Watson's Go to Birmingham 1963

Although I try to limit how many activities each kid participates in, with four kids we seem to spend quite a bit of time on the road. So instead of the kids only watching movies or playing their DS (or maybe harassing one another!) we are regular users of audio books. Let me say this first...some of the books don't hold everyone's attention and sometimes we listen to the same cd over several times to fully understand what is going on. Many times the younger boys (8 & 5) care nothing for the book and play amongst themselves in the back seat. I have found however, that usually the boys end up listening and even enjoy the book by the end.

Our latest read was about an African-American family living in Flint, Michigan in the 1960's. Kenny, a nine year old boy narrates the story. His family, the "Wierd Watsons" includes his dad, his mom, older brother Byron and younger sister Joetta. The book largely depicts Kenny's and his siblings antics: Byron kissing his reflection in a car mirror in January and freezing his lips to the chilled glass, Kenny's friend LJ stealing all Kenny's toy dinosaurs, the countrified new kids at school, and Byron's sliding into friendship with the bad element in town.
As the story continues, Byron continues to misbehave and disregarding his parents warnings. Their parents decide to send Byron down to his Grandma down in Alabama, hoping both the change of scenery and Grandma Sands herself would be a positive influence upon Byron.
However, when the grandmother's church is bombed the family decides to return home, with Byron, in an attempt to avoid explaining of what happened to the children.
Kenny has never encountered racism like this before, and has a difficult time comprehending. He had ran to the church in an attempt to find his sister after the bombing, and saw the aftermath. Spending several days in hiding trying to comprehend what happened and why, Byron eventually is able to help Kenny come to an understanding.

There were a couple of "scary" parts- Kenny almost drowned by what he thought was a Whirpoo monster-actually a whirlpool in a lake; and again imagining the Whirpoo taking his sister away after the bombing (Joetta was not in church when the bomb went off). The story is not gruesome nor graphic. There is some cussing, probably 6-10 words usually spoken by Byron. All the kids (including the big kid, me) enjoyed this story.
A brief narrative that follows explains some of the actual events that inspired parts of this story.
We give The Watson's Go to Birmngham - 1963two thumbs up!