First edition of Witness by Newbery Medalist Karen Hesse. Two children whose race and religion make them targets bear witness against the KKK in small-town Vermont in the 1920s.
Written by Karen Hesse. 2001, first edition, first printing. Scholastic Press.
In 1924, the Ku Klux Klan comes to small-town Vermont with predictable consequences. Two girls new to town - outsiders - become targets. Twelve year-old Leanora Sutter is black, Esther Hirsh is Jewish. The Klan stirs discord among the townspeople but as teacher Dean Schneider writes for the American Library Association, "Ultimately, it is the day-to-day, ordinary kind acts of good people ... that turn the tables on the Klan."
Karen Hesse (1952- ) won the 1997 Newbery Medal for Out of the Dust, in which a young girl and her father struggle to make a life during the Dust Bowl years of the Depression.
Hesse's prose style is further developed in Witness, written in verse from each character's perspective on the story. The major characters are represented in a photo collage assembled from the Walter Dean Myers photograph collection with permission of the relatives of a Scholastic employee.
Witness is an example of "reader's theater", which according to Scholastic "is an integrated approach for involving students in reading, writing, listening, and speaking activities.".
Connect with Karen Hesse at Goodreads.
Goodreads.com/author/show/4057.Karen_Hesse
Condition*: Fine/Fine.
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