The release of Scholastic Storybook Treasures newest title, March On! The Day My Brother Martin Changed the World ($14.95) commemorates the birthday of the most iconic figure in the Civil Rights movement through wonderfully written stories that come to life to educate elementary ages about historical events in African American history.
This 69 minute DVD contains 4 different stories including March On!, Rosa, Martin’s Big Words, and Henry’s Freedom Box: A True Story from the Underground Railroad. Here’s a brief synopsis of each story:
- March On! The Day My Brother Martin Changed the World by Dr. Christine King Ferris- Martin Luther King Jr.’s sister, Dr. Christine King Farris, travels back to 1963 to present a personal, stirring account of the remarkable day when Dr. King delivered his “I Have A Dream Speech.” The narration by Lynn Whitfield becomes even more powerful through the addition of audio clips, songs, noises from the crowd, and portions of Dr. King’s speech that are woven throughout the story.
- Martin’s Big Words by Doreen Rappaport- Using quotes from some of his beloved speeches, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. comes to life in this profound and important biography about beliefs and dreams and following one’s heart.
- Rosa by Nikki Giovanni- On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks boarded a Montgomery, Alabama city bus and refused to give up her seat to a white man, an act that ignited a revolution and changed history.
- Henry’s Freedom Box: A True Story from the Underground Railroad by Ellen Levine – This is the powerful true story of a young slave who mails himself to freedom.
DVD extras include interviews with Dr. Martin Luther King’s sister, Dr. Christine King Farris, and Ellen Levine, author of Henry’s Freedom Box.
With Martin Luther King Day being observed on Monday, this is a wonderful new DVD set that is perfect for educating ages 5-10 about Dr. Martin Luther King and important events from our country’s history in time for Black History Month in February.
Enter to win one of 2 copies of March On! courtesy of Scholastic Storybook Treasures by leaving your e-mail with a comment about how you teach your children about civil rights and/or events in African American history. Winner will be drawn in one week!
March On! is currently available for $14.95. Scholastic Storybook Treasures provided me with a copy to review and 2 to give away. No compensation was received for this post and all opinions are my own.
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Original post by Tech Savvy Mama
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We read stories about Rosa Parks. We watch movies. We talk about Martin Luther King, Jr. We talk about history and historical events. We’d love to add this DVD to our collection.
bgcchs(at)yahoo(dot)com
My grandson just turned 7. His step-family is African-American/Mexican, so we’ve had a lot of opportunity over the last couple of years to talk about people and cultures! He started learning about MLK over the last year. This would be perfect for him. In our situation it has come about naturally for us to talk about civil rights and history!
I am so happy to be living in a generation raising children who see all people as equal. (My oldest is 10) I was sad when my kids became old enough to learn our awful past. I use online resources and books primarily. Mostly these lessons are discussion based because it is so hard to explain that some people can treat other people so poorly. 🙁
Thanks to the preschool teacher, my daughter was already primed to talk about MLK this weekend. Apparently, she was the only one in the class who knew who had a birthday this weekend that gave them the day off!
Yesterday morning, we read through a book we had gotten from the library and one from our bookshelf about MLK. Then, I decided to look on YouTube and we found some snippets of the “I Have a Dream”, so she could experience it visually and audially (?). She had a hard time grasping the concept that there was a time when people of different skin colors had to do things separately, till we talked about her swim lessons, and how some of the kids there would have to swim in a different pool because of their skin color. Her only question about the speech, etc, was “Why is it only black and white and gray?” Good question in 2010!
This isn’t something we’ve really addressed yet – this DVD would be a good start! We lived in Mozambique for a good portion of my daughter’s life to date, and I appreciated the cultural opportunities we had there. I want her to be aware of differences (and history – which contributes to those differences), and to appreciate them. The “colorblindness” so many Americans ascribe to just doesn’t do it for me. I just bought a Crayola multicultural skin tone paint set that we’ll be using a lot, along with multicultural dolls, etc.
We posted about this at Winning Readings: http://winningreadings.blogspot.com/2010/01/march-on-dvd.html
This would be a great place to start for us. My kids are very young, but several of the kids books we read are multicultural.
Wendy
ebeandebe at gmail dot com