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Pinkney, Andrea Davis

Because of You, John Lewis: The True Story of a Remarkable Friendship

40 pp. | Scholastic | March, 2022 | Trade ISBN 978-1-338-75908-2 $18.99
(2) 4-6 Illustrated by Keith Henry Brown. What could have been a straightforward story of a boy meeting his idol becomes in Pinkney's (Martin Rising, rev. 3/18; Loretta Little Looks Back, rev. 11/20) skilled hands a tapestry of intertwined stories looking back to the past and forward to the future. Pinkney introduces Tybre Faw, who as a great admirer of civil rights icon John Lewis attends one of the annual marches across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, which leads to a life-changing meeting with Lewis. Interwoven is the parallel story of John Lewis, who as a young man wrote Dr. Martin Luther King a letter, which led to a life-changing meeting, a lifelong friendship, a life's work. And just as, after Dr. King's death, Lewis was left to "carry on Martin's dream for peace. / To stitch the seams / of his legacy," so "legacy's threads" will stitch in Faw's hopes and bright promise. Pinkney's free-verse text skillfully reinforces the connections between Faw and Lewis, using similar language to introduce them ("When you're a kid from / Johnson City, Tennessee... When you're a boy / in Troy, Alabama") or describe galvanizing incidents (Faw reading about Lewis's activism "lights his dream on fire"; Lewis hearing Dr. King's voice on the radio "lit a light in John's heart"). The telescoping nature of the narratives--starting with Faw and looking back to Lewis and King and thence to "Harriet, Frederick, Sojourner, Du Bois"--encourages young readers to acknowledge the shoulders of giants each generation stands on and to themselves work toward "a brighter tomorrow." Brown's (Birth of the Cool, rev. 5/19) watercolor and pen art is emotive and introspective, focusing on character and connection rather than on events or action. Appended with a lengthy author's note, a timeline of the life of Rep. John Lewis, photographs, and the text of the poem "Invictus" read by Tybre Faw at Lewis's funeral.
Reviewer: Martha V. Parravano | Horn Book Magazine Issue: March, 2022

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