Best of
Family

1968

The Tiger Who Came to Tea


Judith Kerr - 1968
    Funny and entertaining.

The Least One


Borden Deal - 1968
    The Least One, published originally in 1967, portrays a white sharecropping family during the Great Depression and is based on Borden Deal’s experiences growing up on a small farm in northeastern Mississippi. “My own memory produced a flood of material,” said the author. “I remembered the loss of the farm, the day the sheriff had come to dispossess us; I remembered picking blackberries and selling them in town for a dime a bucket; I remembered the hope and promise of a government mule.”The story is told through the voice of a twelve-year-old, significantly called Boy Sword, and is set in a fictitious community that suggests the area of Cullman, Alabama. Deal portrays the realities of cotton-field work: planting, chopping, the laying-by time, and harvesting. He succeeds in evoking not only the crushing economic circumstances of poor Southern whites in that period but also their fierce sense of independence and self-sufficiency.

Cowboy Boots in Darkest Africa


Bill Rice - 1968
    Bill Rice's missionary trip into the jungles of Africa including adventures with elephants, lions, a black panther and much more.

Greyling: A Picture Story from the Islands of Shetland


Jane Yolen - 1968
    A selchie, a seal transformed into human form, lives on land with a lonely fisherman and his wife, until the day a great storm threatens the fisherman's life.

The Kerner Report: The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (The James Madison Library in American Politics)


National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders - 1968
    Hailed by Martin Luther King Jr. as a "physician’s warning of approaching death, with a prescription for life," this historic study was produced by a presidential commission established by Lyndon Johnson, chaired by former Illinois governor Otto Kerner, and provides a riveting account of the riots that shook 1960s America. The commission pointed to the polarization of American society, white racism, economic inopportunity, and other factors, arguing that only "a compassionate, massive, and sustained" effort could reverse the troubling reality of a racially divided, separate, and unequal society. Conservatives criticized the report as a justification of lawless violence while leftist radicals complained that Kerner didn’t go far enough. But for most Americans, this report was an eye-opening account of what was wrong in race relations. Drawing together decades of scholarship showing the widespread and ingrained nature of racism, The Kerner Report provided an important set of arguments about what the nation needs to do to achieve racial justice, one that is familiar in today’s climate. Presented here with an introduction by historian Julian Zelizer, The Kerner Report deserves renewed attention in America’s continuing struggle to achieve true parity in race relations, income, employment, education, and other critical areas.

Christmas at the Tomten's Farm


Harald Wiberg - 1968
    The farm's watchful tomten lends a quiet helping hand during the two days of the Swedish Christmas celebration when the regular farm chores must be attended to in addition to holiday festivities.