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Nancy Keane's | Booktalks -- Quick and Simple | |
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Sharenow,
Rob.
MY MOTHER THE CHEERLEADER New York : Laura Geringer Books, 2007 IL YA ISBN 0061148962 |
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This novel is set in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward during the desegregation of schools in the early 1960s. The “cheerleader” in the title is not the type of cheerleader that immediately comes to mind. The main character, Louise Collins, is a white girl whose mother is a "cheerleader", one of the pack of grown women who heckle, jeer and viciously taunt a six-year-old African American, Ruby Bridges, on her way to school each morning. Louise is pulled out of school because of the desegregation and works in her mother’s boardinghouse, Rooms on Desire. There she makes the acquaintance of a Jewish, New York reporter, Morgan Miller, who has been sent to document the daily melee. Her relationship with Mr. Miller causes Louise to rethink everything that has been instilled in her. This historical novel gives interesting insight to the psyche of what was happening at the time in New Orleans. (Pennsylvania Young Reader’s Choice Awards nominee, 2008-2009) |
| SUBJECTS:
School
integration -- Fiction.
Racism -- Fiction. Race relations -- Fiction. Mothers and daughters -- Fiction. New Orleans (La.) -- History -- 20th century -- Fiction. |
