ABSTRACT
Children's books about the legacies of Brown v. Board of Education encompass all of the varied effects of that decision, including movements toward black separatism and trends toward re-segregation. Fictionalized accounts of school desegregation were published for children even before the historic decision, though most did not appear until the late 1950s. This chapter focuses primarily on three desegregation stories as examples that demonstrate the ways in which the genre of the school story imposes a common framework on representations of the Brown legacy: Mary Jane by Dorothy Sterling, Lions of Little Rock by Kristen Levine, and With the Might of Angels by Andrea Davis Pinkney. These three particular novels are useful for study in part because they seem to have had some influence with young readers, although this is hard to gauge for certain. The school story genre has several permutations, depending upon the era, nationality, and type of school setting.
