Colored Car

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A01=Jean Alicia Elster
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Author_Jean Alicia Elster
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Category1=Fiction
Category1=Kids
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=F
Category=JBSL
Category=JFSL3
Category=YF
COP=United States
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
empowering
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eq_childrens
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eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
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eq_teenage-young-adult
historical fiction
jim crow
Language_English
PA=Available
Price_€10 to €20
PS=Active
softlaunch
the great depression
young readers

Product details

  • ISBN 9780814336069
  • Weight: 366g
  • Dimensions: 127 x 187mm
  • Publication Date: 13 Sep 2013
  • Publisher: Wayne State University Press
  • Publication City/Country: US
  • Product Form: Paperback
  • Language: English
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In The Colored Car, Jean Alicia Elster, author of the award-winning Who's Jim Hines?, follows another member of the Ford family coming of age in Depression-era Detroit. In the hot summer of 1937, twelve-year-old Patsy takes care of her three younger sisters and helps her mother put up fresh fruits and vegetables in the family's summer kitchen, adjacent to the wood yard that her father, Douglas Ford, owns. Times are tough, and Patsy's mother, May Ford, helps neighbourhood families by sharing the food that she preserves. But May's decision to take a break from canning to take her daughters for a visit to their grandmother's home in Clarksville, Tennessee, sets in motion a series of events that prove to be life-changing for Patsy.

After boarding the first-class train car at Michigan Central Station in Detroit and riding comfortably to Cincinnati, Patsy is shocked when her family is led from their seats to change cars. In the dirty, cramped ""coloured car,"" Patsy finds that the life she has known in Detroit is very different from life down south, and she can hardly get the experience out of her mind when she returns home-like the soot stain on her finely made dress or the smear on the quilt squares her grandmother taught her to sew. As summer wears on, Patsy must find a way to understand her experience in the coloured car and also deal with the more subtle injustices that her family faces in Detroit. By the end of the story, Patsy will never see the world in the same way that she did before.

Elster's engaging narrative illustrates the personal impact of segregation and discrimination and reveals powerful glimpses of everyday life in 1930s Detroit. For young readers interested in American history, The Colored Car is engrossing and informative reading.
Jean Alicia Elster is a professional writer of fiction for children and young adults. She is the granddaughter of Douglas and Maber (May) Jackson Ford, whose family story is the basis of The Colored Car. Her other books include Who's Jim Hines? (Wayne State University Press, 2008), which was selected as a Michigan Notable Book and a ForeWord Book of the Year finalist;I'll Do the Right Thing; I'll Fly My Own Plane; I Have a Dream, Too!; and Just Call Me Joe Joe.

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