ABSTRACT
In the last two decades, books for children have tended to address school desegregation through the genres of historical fiction, memoir, or history. This chapter discusses three novels that represent a range of approaches to accountability and choice as legacies of Brown—even though, in keeping with contemporary discourses, all of them accomplish their critiques without actually mentioning school desegregation. They are Louis Sachar's Holes, Anderson's Octavian Nothing, and Flake's Pinned. These novels alter the plot structure of the desegregation story in multiple ways. As the novels explore alternate settings for antiracist education besides the public school classroom, they also experiment with different genres for stories of education, and different time frames for learning other than the bounded school year. None of the three novels constructs school desegregation as a solution for issues of racial justice. They engage with contemporary discourses about accountability and achievement gaps that their intended young readers may recognize.
