History comes to life in Wiles's second "Sixties" installment|Audio Pick

revolutionWiles, Deborah. Revolution. (The Sixties Trilogy: Bk. 2). 10 CDs. 12:10 hrs. Listening Library. 2014. $50. ISBN 9780553395266. digital download. Gr 5-8–At home, 12-year-old Sunny’s prickly relationships with her blended family trigger yearning for her absent mother. In town, the community faces SNCCs, COFOs and COREs, invaders from the North who’ve come to register black voters despite violent local opposition. Stacey Aswad perfectly conveys Sunny’s sassy young voice while Francois Battiste becomes Raymond, the African American boy who personifies the struggle for civil rights. A full cast brings to life the excerpts from speeches, song lyrics, KKK leaflets, and gospel music that establish the setting as Greenwood, Mississippi, in the summer of 1964. The audio production adds value to this documentary novel (defined by Michael Hinken as “a genre that intentionally blurs the line between fact and fiction”) because hearing the words and music of the time connects listeners emotionally. The heartfelt reading of Langston Hughes’s poem, “I, Too, Sing America,” for example, is a powerful experience. An afterword discusses the effects of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which ensured African Americans the right to vote. Wiles’s Revolution, second in “The Sixties Trilogy” (after Countdown), belongs in every library.–Toby Rajput, National Louis University, Skokie, IL

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