Christopher Paul Curtis · 1995 · road

Christopher Paul Curtis's 1995 novel, narrated by ten-year-old Kenny Watson, whose warm, funny Black family from Flint, Michigan piles into the car they call the Brown Bomber and drives south to Birmingham, Alabama in the summer of 1963. The comedy of the road trip gives way to history when they arrive in a city on the edge of the civil rights struggle, and the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church brings tragedy terribly close. A beloved book that carries enormous weight lightly.

1. 1
   Flint

   The Watson family loads up the Brown Bomber in Flint, Michigan and sets off on the long drive to visit Grandma Sands in Alabama.

2. 2
   Cincinnati

   South across Ohio and the river, crossing from the world they know into the segregated South.

3. 3
   Nashville

   Down through Tennessee, the father driving almost without stopping, the children half asleep in the back.

4. 4
   Birmingham

   Birmingham in the summer of 1963, where a joyful visit collides with the bombing of a church and the violence at the heart of the civil rights era.