The Lions of Little Rock

This book has so many layers that you won't be disappointed. It is about courage, friendship, integration, and fear. The lions are metaphors for a number of things in the story which I wouldn't have thought much about until taking a grad. Class in which we studied it in depth. My son that is in middle school enjoyed it as well. It is about a real time in history that I didn't know much about and it is very well written.

We chose this recently for book club and it was a great read! I highly recommend this for both kids and adult. A great book to read aloud with your kids (9+) or to read independently. So many great discussion points as well. Highly recommend! Very well written!

The Lions of Little Rock - for me, it seemed to start off a little slow. Maybe it was me...maybe it was the writing. Regardless, it soon picked up for me and carried me away to the 1950s to a time when people were divided by color of skin. The characters are brilliant. The writing authentic. The story itself so very touching. Definitely one of my all-time favorite books EVER!!!!!

I read this book so I would know whether or not my soon to be 8th grader would accurately do a book report on it. I was pleasantly surprised. This book is fiction, of course, but is very realistic and brings thoughts & characteristics out of the characters that can't be taught or seem to have been loss in today's world. I was impressed & appreciated the strong & positive morality of the book.

The debacle caused in Little Rock, Arkansas and the resistance to integrating schools is well known. It is not as widely known that the high schools actually shut down for an entire year because the school board was so dead set against integration. Levine brings us a story from the perspective of a middle school girl whose sister is sent to live with grandmother so that she does not lose a year of school.She delves into the issues without sugar-coating anything, from the issues of "passing" as white, to the violence against both blacks and whites who support integration, to the great hope that comes from seeing people find their voices to finally speak out against what is not right.Marlee becomes friends with a girl who is found to be "passing" as white. She pursues the friendship against the instructions of her parents, finds her voice, and becomes a key player in the fight to re-open the schools.Inspiring book - don't miss it!

I truly enjoyed this story. The characters are vivid in my imagination as if it were a movie. It made me reflect on my own childhood in the 60s growing up in Mississippi. I think this book can help students of all kinds discuss this time in history and make a connection for where they are today. I recommend this book for 6th and up, although it could be a good read aloud for a parent and child that leads to some discussion about acceptance of others.

It's too easy to think of great Civil Rights moments -- like the integration of the schools of Little Rock, Ark., as one-off events. This book explores the realities (but as a novel) of the hardships of the year AFTER the Little Rock Schools were ordered integrated when (who knew!) the local school board simply closed the schools rather than comply with the decision. A powerful book for any age, but suitable for grade 5 and up (the protagonists are 5th graders), I love this book about friendship, honesty, courage, activism, families, and finding oneself stuck in a really rough patch of history.

Enough fiction to be interesting, enough history to be informative for people of all ages. The kind of book that can lead to interesting conversation.

On behalf of my 11 year old.She really loved this book, which I was surprised by as she'd been reading the safe school stories like Malory Towers for years and we were struggling to get her to be more adventurous. Something about this book really pulled her in though and she loved it, and then demanded another Kirsten Levine book, and then another for Christmas. She has read some out loud to me and it's nicely written. She talks about the books and the issues presented, and it's giving her quite a lot of awareness of a world outside her rather sheltered life.

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Inspirational book

“Kristin Levine's The Lions of Little Rock, the story of a black girl and a white girl who become friends during the integration of that city's schools in 1958, has been awarded the New-York Historical Society's first children's history book prize."

Excellent book.It is beautiful.