Recommended Ages: Gr. 2-4

Plot Summary: Victor Hugo Green is a black man from New York who loved to travel but didn't feel safe doing so because he and his family are black. After being inspired by seeing a bok recommending restaurants for Jews who keep kosher, he used his connections as a mail carrier to find businesses that were either black owned or safe for blacks. This information was published for the first time in 1936. It became a hot seller right away, even though others had tried a similar concept, likely because of his connections and networking through his job as a postal worker. Victor and his wife worked on the next one almost right away, this time trying to find safe places for Blacks in other parts of the country. The Green Book was edited and published until 1966.

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Controversial Issues: in the author's note there is mention of two blacks dying at the hands of police and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement

Personal Thoughts: As a white woman, I was unfamiliar with the Green Book. This book had the right amount of information to use as an introduction to the historical importance. Segregation is explained in the first few pages to help the reader understand the need for the green book. The author's note was heartbreaking. I had no idea that there are three people working on updating the Green Book for today, which is telling me that society still has a loooooong way to go in giving everyone equal rights. Clearly this book is important, and I hope everyone will read the author's note to see it's not just a thing of the past.

Genre: informational text, narrative non-fiction

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A nice complement to another excellent children's book about the Green Book: Ruth and the Green Book, Opening the Road tells the true story of Victor Hugo Green and how he decided to create this famous book. The story shows how the Green Book started off as a humble guidebook of just ten pages and limited to New York City. Green expanded it not longer thereafter at the request of others. I loved Opening the Road and appreciate that it teaches history to young readers.

Full review on Goodreads. ( )

This picture book will acquaint many readers with The Green Book, a yearly publication first available in 1936 that apprised African Americans of places that would welcome Black travelers. Before the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960’s, many hotels, restaurants, gas stations, hospitals, and other establishments would not serve African Americans. When traveling they often had to pack cold food, blankets, pillows for sleeping the car, and make-do toilets. There was a large demand for information on whether there were any safe places they could go.

New York City mail carrier Victor Green decided to do something about it, and began compiling lists of places that were welcoming to Black Americans. His first guide was ten pages and related only to the New York area. The author observed, “It sold like hotcakes!” People began calling Victor and begging that he expand his book to cover other states, so Victor wrote letters to other Black postal workers all over the country for the names and addresses of places that welcomed Black customers.

Two years later, The Green Book had more than doubled in size, and by 1941 it contained 80 pages. Eventually the guide covered all of the US, Bermuda, Mexico, and Canada, and more than two million copies of The Green Book were sold. The only time it was not published was during World War II, from 1942 to 1945. You can find an entire edition of the 1949 book online here. As Newsweek reported, The Green Book “often meant the difference between a hot meal and a vicious beating.”

The Civil Rights Bill, making such discrimination illegal, was passed on July 2, 1964, and Victor Green published the final edition of The Green Book soon thereafter. (In the Introduction to the 1949 book linked to above, the author writes, "There will be a day sometime in the near future when this guide will not have to be published. It will be a great day for us to suspend this publication . . .")

The book ends with an Author’s Note, timeline, and selected bibliography. In the Note, the author writes “even as movements build and some things improve, racist systems and practices persist.” Writing of The Green Book’s "renaissance" in the age of #BlackLivesMatter, a librarian at the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture pointed to the nation experiencing “what feels like a nadir of disregard for the sanctity of Black life,” and suggested that "in order to fully grasp and understand the importance of this 80-year-old publication, we must also truly grapple with how Black motorists are still being treated by the police and their fellow citizens.”

Alleanna Harris does a great job as always incorporating historical references into her animation-style illustrations.

Evaluation: This book provides a good way for children to understand just what “Jim Crow” was and what it meant for blacks to live under its strictures, even though they were supposed to be equal citizens. (Another excellent picture book for children on the same subject but with a fictional little girl on a trip as narrator, showing the user’s point of view, is Ruth and the Green Book by Calvin Alexander Ramsey, published by Carolrhoda Books in 2010.) ( )

Excellent book, with relevant current information at the end of the book, telling about how blacks are publishing digital versions, to help others feel safe. ( )