Turning Points Little Rock Nine back

Part of the educational Turning Points series dealing with important historical shifts in society, this is a portrayal of events surrounding the desegregation of schools in America, the forces promoting the desegregation, the forces opposing it with violence and equally repellent 'reasoning', and the families caught in the middle.

Some of it's obvious but no less accurate for that, like the white grandfather's steadfast two-tier racism and his dinner table rants oblivious to the black housemaid's presence, but much of it isn't, like the housemaid's own home life and the very real threat to her son. Because it's all very well for us to sit here in the 21st Century and say, "Of course segregation is abhorrent on a personal level and divisive on a social level" but if you're a Mum or a Dad then your child's safety instinctively comes first waaaay above your just demands and struggle for equality. Poor Thomas gets it from all sides, even though he's the one willing to be brave enough to risk the crowds picketing his school enough to get lynched (the police obligingly disappear), and you can see just how such a situation could tear a family apart.

Nor are the political machinations given short shrift here. The Supreme Court has demanded that all schools are to be desegregated "with all deliberate speed" but The Arkansas Assembly has nimby-ed out (not in my back yard) by passing laws forbidding forced desegregation. "We can't have Washington telling the good people of Arkansas what to do," says the Governor. Which is an interesting take on the United States Of America.

The choice of art may be a deliberate appeal to the age range that enjoys that particular bland brand of animation on television, though it's by no means dysfunctional. I just think they've made the same mistake we witnessed in the MINX line of failing to find a more inspired artist and made do - which is odd because this is the same publisher who went with Hope Larson's CHIGGERS which blew the MINX line out of the summer camp water. At the end of the day, though, if you can say that you're glad you've read something then that's the main thing, and I'm certainly glad I read it.