The Lions of Little Rock (review)

It's 1958, and although the Little Rock Nine integrated an Arkansas high school the previous year, segregationists then succeeded in closing the public high schools rather than reopen them to a racially mixed student body. Twelve-year-old Marlee's family is disrupted by the closing: her older sister cannot begin her junior year, and her mother cannot start her teaching job. It's Marlee herself, though, who becomes deeply embroiled in the racial tension in the city when she makes friends with a transfer student, Liz Templeton, whose outgoing kindness draws painfully shy Marlee out of her shell. A bigoted neighbor happens to see Liz with a young African-American man on the "colored" side of town, and her cover is blown—Liz has been passing as white in order to attend a better school. Marlee takes to heart everything from Sunday school lessons to her father's natural propensity toward tolerance and is determined to remain friends with Liz, but even her father advises against it: "Segregationists don't take kindly to Negroes who try to pass as white. Liz and her family are in real danger. The farther away you stay from them, the better." Sadly, he proves to be right: Marlee's well-intended activism leads directly to a bombing with Liz as the target. This affecting tale of interracial friendship brings complex issues of principles, pragmatism, and family loyalty within the grasp of middle-school readers. The bombing plot steers the book briefly into a more crime-story (and less successful) style at times, but it's the realistic unfolding of events that will grip audiences. The ultimate suspension of the girls' friendship is the only credible outcome, and readers can only carry away the bittersweet hope that they'll meet again in a more enlightened decade.