Book Review # 2

Getting Away with Murder: The True Story of the Emmett Till Case

The story of Emmett Till is one that everyone needs to hear. It is a little-known story of a black boy from Chicago that is murdered in Mississippi on 1955 for whistling at a white woman. He was fourteen years old and unfamiliar with the Jim Crow Laws of the South. Chris Crowe is able to put together an eye-opening book about Emmett and the facts of his murder, the trial, and the events of the Civil Rights Movement that soon follow. This book may take readers out of their safe comfort zone of the current times, but tells a true story of a young boy that died at the hands of adults because of the color of his skin.

This book received the IRA’s children Book Award and was a Jane Addams Honor Book.

In the classroom this book could be used to teach research, how to find reliable sources, and how pull research together, as well as to introduce the Civil Rights movement into a unit of study.

Chris Crowe is an English professor of young adult literature at Brigham Young University. He became interested in Emmett Till when writing a book about Mildred D. Taylor. She had written about Emmett in one of her essays. He followed up on Emmett and was able to tell his story.

Review can be found at www.amazon.com