Be the Light: How She Became Angela Davis

Gr 1-3–A picture book biography that expertly combines traditional and digital art forms to detail the life of political activist Angela Davis. She lived in a loving and friendly neighborhood in Birmingham, AL, but that friendliness was nowhere to be found when her family moved to a new neighborhood nicknamed “Dynamite Hill,” so-called because of the frequent bombings of the ­houses of Black families. In the segregated south, “whites only” signs prevented Davis from entering certain establishments. These restrictions angered her, but she found comfort in the belief that in the future, it wouldn’t always be this way. As she progressed from student to professor, she passed on this ­belief in a better world to her students. Even when she was in jail, she encouraged the other women there to imagine new worlds where they would have the freedom to do anything. For every reader of this picture book, Davis continues to pass on the message that everyone can be the light in someone’s life and show them that bad times won’t last. The author weaves a tale of a young girl from the segregated south who transformed her anger at discrimination into the drive to keep moving to a different future. This volume introduces readers to tough topics like segregation and racial discrimination but does so in a way that is accessible to a picture book audience. It also provides an opportunity to discuss these topics while remembering Davis’s sentiment, that there is freedom in the future ahead and it will not always be this way.