The Watsons Go to Birmingham-- 1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis

The Watsons Go to Birmingham--1963 is the story of a family told from the middle child's point of view. When the family is in Birmingham, everyone but especially Kenny is affected when they think that Joetta, the youngest Watson, was inside when the church was bombed.

This book was very humorous. Byron provides a lot of comic relief. He gets his lips stuck to a mirror during a winter storm, and straightens his hair then subsequently has it shaved off by Dad.

I expected that the book would primarily be about the Civil Rights Movement and have a heavy historical fiction slant. However, more than anything, it was about family. Through the majority of the book, I learned about the family's interworkings and came to know the characters well. From Kenny's perspective, I came to know Momma as an easily embarrassed, serious, strong woman; Dad as a fun-loving, kind, but strict father; Joetta as a religious kindergartner who tried to protect her brother; and Byron as a trouble-making, but soft-hearted bully.

Throughout, I was waiting for the family to encounter prejudice or witness racial inequality, but there was nothing until the church was bombed. In retrospect, I think that the story was stronger and more powerful as a result. Because I had not been primed to read about hatred for the first 180 pages, the church bombing shocked me as it must have shocked the people who actually experienced it. Since I knew the characters as people, it made it more painful to know the pain the bombing had caused.

I appreciated the epilogue at the end of the story. While the text provided closure as to how the family dealt with the tragedy of the church bombing, the epilogue gave closure and more information about the motivations of those who participated in the Civil Rights Movement and a historical context for the bombing. Without the epilogue, I think I would have felt that the story was unfinished.