Jill Ratzan

On the opening (endpaper) double-page spread, centenarian Lillian stands at the base of a hill that leads to her polling place. She takes small, slow, determined steps up, all the while contemplating the metaphorical steps taken by her predecessors that afforded her the right to vote today. In her mind’s eye she sees her “great-great-grandparents Elijah and Sarah…standing side by side on an auction block”; “her great-grandpa Edmund…forced to pick cotton from daybreak to nightfall—right here in this country where it is written that ‘all men are created equal’”; “the cross burning on the lawn of her girlhood home, set aflame…just because her parents want to vote.” Winter weaves a good amount of African American history and civil rights information throughout his earnest tale of one family’s tragedies and triumphs: “Though her feet and legs ache with one hundred years of walking, what fuels her ancient body is seeing those six hundred people beginning a peaceful protest march from Selma to Montgomery