Yankee Girl
It's 1964 and Alice has moved to Mississippi from Chicago with her family. Nicknamed 'Yankee Girl' and taunted by the in-crowd at school, Alice soon discovers the other new girl Valerie - one of the school's first black students - has it much worse.Alice can't stand the way Valerie is treated, and yet she knows she will remain an outsider if she speaks up. It takes a horrible tragedy to finally give Alice the courage to stand up for what she believes.Set in the Deep South in the 1960s, Yankee Girl is a powerful, resonant and relevant story about racism and doing the right thing.
Mary Ann Rodman wanted to be a writer since the age of three, but was only inspired to write Yankee Girl, her first novel, after leaving her job as a librarian and moving to Thailand. The experience of dealing with a completely different culture reminded her of her childhood years spent in Jackson, Mississippi, in the 1960s. Mary Ann moved to Mississippi when her father, an FBI agent, was sent there to investigate hate crimes during the civil rights movement. Yankee Girl is based on the author's personal experiences of that time and her character Alice Ann is, she says, "an improved version of me, someone who I wish I could have been". Mary Ann Rodman is married with one daughter and now lives in Alpharetta, Georgia.
Author: Mary Ann Rodman
Format: Paperback, 256 pages, 130mm x 198mm, 219 g
Published: 2017, Usborne Publishing Ltd, United Kingdom
Genre: Children's Fiction
Interest Age: From 11 to 14 years
It's 1964 and Alice has moved to Mississippi from Chicago with her family. Nicknamed 'Yankee Girl' and taunted by the in-crowd at school, Alice soon discovers the other new girl Valerie - one of the school's first black students - has it much worse.Alice can't stand the way Valerie is treated, and yet she knows she will remain an outsider if she speaks up. It takes a horrible tragedy to finally give Alice the courage to stand up for what she believes.Set in the Deep South in the 1960s, Yankee Girl is a powerful, resonant and relevant story about racism and doing the right thing.
Mary Ann Rodman wanted to be a writer since the age of three, but was only inspired to write Yankee Girl, her first novel, after leaving her job as a librarian and moving to Thailand. The experience of dealing with a completely different culture reminded her of her childhood years spent in Jackson, Mississippi, in the 1960s. Mary Ann moved to Mississippi when her father, an FBI agent, was sent there to investigate hate crimes during the civil rights movement. Yankee Girl is based on the author's personal experiences of that time and her character Alice Ann is, she says, "an improved version of me, someone who I wish I could have been". Mary Ann Rodman is married with one daughter and now lives in Alpharetta, Georgia.