They Called Themselves the K.K.K.

Gr 7—10—Somber music begins this thought-provoking and powerful narrative of the beginnings of the Klu Klux Klan. Born from the chaos of the Reconstruction after the Civil War, the Klan started out as a "club" made up of six former Confederate soldiers who seethed with anger at their loss of land, power, and way of life. From their meeting at a law office in Pulaski, Tennessee, an American-bred terrorist organization was formed, bent on wreaking their own form of vigilante justice against the freed slaves and their supporters. Dion Graham's deep, intimate voice pulls listeners into the book (Houghton Mifflin, 2010) by Susan Campbell Bartoletti, taking us from the ruined plantations of the South to the floor of the Senate, and laying out the complex story of how the Klan became established in America and its legacy today. Graham's attempts to lend voice to the many first-person accounts that Bartoletti sprinkles throughout her narrative are mostly successful, but one wonders if this audiobook may have worked even better as a multi-voiced production. An interview with the author is less successful than the author's readings of her "Note to the Listener" and her source notes, which provide an account of her experience at a modern-day Klan rally. The bonus disc, which is comprised mostly of pictures, is worth exploring, but it is Graham's reading of the insightful text that will grab listeners.—Necia Blundy, Marlborough Public Library, MA