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randi71's review against another edition
dark
emotional
informative
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
4.25
lisahelene's review against another edition
4.0
I read this because my son is reading it in school & he recommended it. It's mainly historical fiction based on true events. The author did a good job of telling the story from a young boy's perspective.
susanbarto's review against another edition
4.0
This gripping story of how things were in Mississippi 1955 should be read by 8th grader and older. Hopefully we can learn from the past.
taratara44's review against another edition
3.0
(If you're reading this Dr. Crowe, please do not be offended by my 3 star review, I did like your book, my starring system is just harsh)
I really liked this book and it has a great ending. what I didn't like was that it felt like Hirim just reflected a lot which led to boring parts. I listened to this on an audiobook which always emphasizes those parts of books though
**EDIT**
Reading this book with my students made me LOVE this book. It is an excellent read
I really liked this book and it has a great ending. what I didn't like was that it felt like Hirim just reflected a lot which led to boring parts. I listened to this on an audiobook which always emphasizes those parts of books though
**EDIT**
Reading this book with my students made me LOVE this book. It is an excellent read
lmjones's review against another edition
4.0
I just read this for a bookclub and before picking it up had never heard of Emmett Till. I was engrossed. It is well written YA and timely. Crowe depicted the racism, hate, and depravities of the South along with the region's beauties. The teenage main character, Hiram, finds himself struggling to reconcile the love he has for his grandfather and all that is good about Greenwood, Mississippi with the contempt and cruelty their "way of life" holds toward Black Americans. As I read through the justifications for such cruelty and contempt made by various characters and even written in the news papers of the times, I couldn't help but see strong ties to the arguments still being made that seek to completely discredit the current dialogue on police brutality: "Sure, it's a shame that he died, but if Emmett Till hadn't flirted with a white woman in the first place..." As if mutilation and murder are the natural consequence to a 14 year old boys's cockiness and lack of judgement. (If that were true, I don't know how many 14 year old boys we'd have left in the world.)
The telling of this critical moment in history and the candor of the protagonist as he seeks to do what is right when the equilibrium of his life is lost are resonant and relatable. One of the central messages is that telling the truth is always the right thing, even in the face of disrupting everything, life as he knew it (because for them in the South, it was), even in the face of potentially ruining family reputations and chances at love. But that's obvious to every well intended human, isn't it? Maybe not. In this book I saw justifications about doing the wrong thing or at least failing to do the right thing for "the greater good" that could have come straight out of the month of friends and loved ones of my own today and that probably have come out of my own mouth at some point or another. And maybe the most valuable thing about this book is that it isn't political (in spite of the fact that Till's death served as a catalyst for the Civil Rights movement); it's human, it's personal.
As of now, I'm not throwing up 5 stars because I still can't decide how satisfied I am with the ending.
But all in all, I'd recommend it.
The telling of this critical moment in history and the candor of the protagonist as he seeks to do what is right when the equilibrium of his life is lost are resonant and relatable. One of the central messages is that telling the truth is always the right thing, even in the face of disrupting everything, life as he knew it (because for them in the South, it was), even in the face of potentially ruining family reputations and chances at love. But that's obvious to every well intended human, isn't it? Maybe not. In this book I saw justifications about doing the wrong thing or at least failing to do the right thing for "the greater good" that could have come straight out of the month of friends and loved ones of my own today and that probably have come out of my own mouth at some point or another. And maybe the most valuable thing about this book is that it isn't political (in spite of the fact that Till's death served as a catalyst for the Civil Rights movement); it's human, it's personal.
As of now, I'm not throwing up 5 stars because I still can't decide how satisfied I am with the ending.
Spoiler
It's an ending that works, but it did feel anticlimactic as the focus shifted from the horrifying "not guilty" verdict to other things that Hiram had been preoccupied with namely, Naomi, his parentally abused love interest.But all in all, I'd recommend it.
the_fabric_of_words's review against another edition
5.0
As an ELA teacher, I was always looking to strengthen my students' development of empathy, and one of the ways to do that is to draw parallels from their own lives to the very real struggles and sacrifices of others.
I thought that the story of Mississippi Trial's main character, Hiram Hillburn, is an excellent example of white privilege, in that Hiram has the ability to make a key choice -- to leave -- that that many African-Americans living in Mississippi in that time period did not have.
Hiram is white and being raised by liberal parents who rejected the Deep South and its Jim Crow ways, but he also butts heads with his father as he doesn't remember or understand the Mississippi Delta and his grandfather. When Hiram was little, his father turned his back on segregated Mississippi and moved the family to integrated Phoenix, Arizona.
This is the part students in your classroom may relate to. They often don't understand why parents or grandparents do the things they do, as seen through the rose-colored lenses of youth and inexperience. It's not until those things are painfully stripped away that teens, no longer teens but young men and women, begin to understand the sacrifices their parents made, and how those sacrifices are not always as clear-cut as they'd like them to be.
Hiram gets his wish to return to the Delta and his grandfather the summer after his grandfather suffers a stroke and needs someone to help look after him. Hiram meets Emmett in a stream and is shocked to learn of the boy's murder days later.
He calls the police on a childhood schoolmate who bragged of what he'd do to Emmett, before the murder, and then disappears immediately after. Hiram's pulled into the trial of the two men arrested for Emmett's murder, and his grandfather drives him to the murder trial every day in his pickup, as Hiram's summoned to appear as a witness.
Hiram's never called to the stand to testify, but he learns something about his grandfather that he wishes he never knew -- and he elects, in the end, to leave the old man and rejoin his father and family in Phoenix, with a newfound understanding of his father's choices.
As a classroom teaching unit, Mississippi Trial, 1955 has many advantages. It's an older book, published in the early 2000s, so there's plenty of FREE teaching materials provided to help you monitor your students' progress in the book (i.e. comprehension questions) and scaffold their reading.
Author Chris Crowe offers a civil rights timeline on his website, with 51 points leading up to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and article, "Where did Mississippi Trial, 1955" come from." There's even a rough draft of the original first chapter (for those of you teaching ELA and that writing is a process).
I also offer free lesson plans for Social Studies teachers introducing Jim Crow laws to their upper middle school students.
Visit my blog for more great middle grade book recommendations, free teaching materials and fiction writing tips: https://amb.mystrikingly.com/
I thought that the story of Mississippi Trial's main character, Hiram Hillburn, is an excellent example of white privilege, in that Hiram has the ability to make a key choice -- to leave -- that that many African-Americans living in Mississippi in that time period did not have.
Hiram is white and being raised by liberal parents who rejected the Deep South and its Jim Crow ways, but he also butts heads with his father as he doesn't remember or understand the Mississippi Delta and his grandfather. When Hiram was little, his father turned his back on segregated Mississippi and moved the family to integrated Phoenix, Arizona.
This is the part students in your classroom may relate to. They often don't understand why parents or grandparents do the things they do, as seen through the rose-colored lenses of youth and inexperience. It's not until those things are painfully stripped away that teens, no longer teens but young men and women, begin to understand the sacrifices their parents made, and how those sacrifices are not always as clear-cut as they'd like them to be.
Hiram gets his wish to return to the Delta and his grandfather the summer after his grandfather suffers a stroke and needs someone to help look after him. Hiram meets Emmett in a stream and is shocked to learn of the boy's murder days later.
He calls the police on a childhood schoolmate who bragged of what he'd do to Emmett, before the murder, and then disappears immediately after. Hiram's pulled into the trial of the two men arrested for Emmett's murder, and his grandfather drives him to the murder trial every day in his pickup, as Hiram's summoned to appear as a witness.
Hiram's never called to the stand to testify, but he learns something about his grandfather that he wishes he never knew -- and he elects, in the end, to leave the old man and rejoin his father and family in Phoenix, with a newfound understanding of his father's choices.
As a classroom teaching unit, Mississippi Trial, 1955 has many advantages. It's an older book, published in the early 2000s, so there's plenty of FREE teaching materials provided to help you monitor your students' progress in the book (i.e. comprehension questions) and scaffold their reading.
Author Chris Crowe offers a civil rights timeline on his website, with 51 points leading up to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and article, "Where did Mississippi Trial, 1955" come from." There's even a rough draft of the original first chapter (for those of you teaching ELA and that writing is a process).
I also offer free lesson plans for Social Studies teachers introducing Jim Crow laws to their upper middle school students.
Visit my blog for more great middle grade book recommendations, free teaching materials and fiction writing tips: https://amb.mystrikingly.com/
dgodek's review against another edition
3.0
I don't often say this, but I preferred the non-fiction account of events by Chris Crowe, Getting Away with Murder, more than I did this historical fiction. Still, this book is a great introduction to the Emmett Till case, about which all students should learn.
kjones31's review against another edition
4.0
Really hard to read because of the darkness of the subject matter (which is heavily based in historical fact) but a very important book, especially for adolescents. I never learned about Emmett Till when I was in school and now I'm wondering why. The writing is not the best, but the story still hits you square in the heart just like it should.