Fetch The Red Rose Box Assembled By Brenda Woods Manuscript

Red Rose Box is a moving story about two sisters growing up in Jim Crow Era Louisiana, circa, Leah, the older sister, receives a fancy red rose box from her Aunt Olivia in California for her birthday, The box contains all kinds of beautiful things that Leah has never seen before and train tickets for her family to travel west for a visit, Leah, her younger sister Ruth, their mother and grandmother board a segregated train car in New Orleans and set out to visit Aunt Olivia and her husband.
As Leah puts it, "Three days later we were in Los Angeles, I was never going to be the same, "

Leah's world, once so small, suddenly opens up to the possibilities of racial integration and freedom that she had never before known, She is amazed to find that drinking fountains, restaurants, movie theaters and department stores do not bear the "Whites Only"

or "Colored Only" signs that followed her everywhere she went in Louisiana.
Her aunt and uncle, upper middle class realestate brokers, live in a home far more splendid than anything she has ever seen, They are college educated and hold professional jobs, unlike her parents who are forced to work as a domestic and field hand in order to cobble together a living for their family.


After the visit, Leah is torn between two worlds, between the harshbutcomfortingfamiliarity of her southern home and the desire to escape it altogether and follow her dreams of becoming a teacher.
The book is beautifully written Leah's honest perspective about the events she experiences are woven together using wonderful imagery, She juxtaposes walking around the city in newbutuncomfortable shoes with walking barefoot in the mud and grass of home, She sees her aunt and uncle become involved with their local chapter of the NAACP and hears them discussing the recent landmark case Brown vs, Board of Education. For the first time, she envisions a life in which black and white students attend school together, even in the south,

This book is a great piece of historical fiction for young readers, It examines the very beginnings of the civil rights movement and explores themes of racism and family dynamics in a deeply personal way, through the eyes of a preteen girl.
I felt a palpable sense of fear as Leah, Ruth and two local boys are harangued by a truck of white boys hurling insults at them as they walked along the road.
I envisioned the wideeyed wonder they felt as they visited the northern cities of Los Angeles and New York for the first time and experienced life outside of Jim Crow.
I felt the comfort that Leah felt in having her sister her best friend beside her on her journey that does at one point take a turn for the tragic.
This book was riveting from start to finish and the only reason I give it four instead of five is that I feel like it ended too abruptly I wanted it to keep going.


The Red Rose Box is a historical fiction book that I would most definitely want in my classroom, I enjoyed reading from the perspective of two young African American girls growing up in the's south with Jim Crow laws, Despite the setting of this book, it was different from your typical HF novel written in this time frame and I enjoyed this, Leah and her sister Ruth experience life outside of their usual world and the thoughts and experiences that come with it are as exciting and thoughtprovoking to the reader as they are to the characters.
I would most certainly recommend this book to readers as young asor, sooo sad, but it does have a lot of funny parts too
It was JuneLeah Hopper was turning, The Red Rose Box takes place in Sulphur, Louisiana during the Civil Rights Movement, Leah and Ruth Hopper,sisters, are caught between two worlds when tragedy strikes Sulphur, Louisiana,

With the red rose box, filled with femininity, in hand the two colored girls are forced to leave Jim Crow laws and move to Los Angeles where freedom rings.


No more cotton fields and possum dinner, no more washing “whites” clothes, In this new world all people come together,

With sadness in their hearts they are forced to come to terms with the changing world around them,

Woods was born in Cincinnati Ohio and moved to Los Angeles when she was six, People often thought she was weird, One day Woods picked up a note book and pen and has been writing ever since

“I really enjoyed reading this book, since it is where I live now.
Woods truly captured the south in this wonderful read, Plus my birthday is in June, ”

Intended for agesand up,
Coretta Scott King Honor
Interesting contrast between rural southern Louisiana and Southern California during the earlys, Leah and Ruth are two sisters experiencing a quickly changing world, They move from Louisiana, where they live with their mom, dad, and grandma to California to live with their aunt and uncle when disaster strikes Sulphur, LA.
It is time for the Hopper girls to learn about love, loss, and creating a new home, The book, The Red Rose Box by Brenda Woods, The book was about these two sisters named Leah and Ruth Hopper, They lived in Sulphur, Louisiana, One day for Leahs birthday, her aunt Olivia who lives in Los Angeles, gave Leah A red rose box, It wasnt normal to see that beautiful of a gift because Leah and her family lived in the south where there was the Jim Crow laws, After she received the box things changed and Leahs Life would never be the same, Something tragic happened so Leah and Ruth had to live with their aunt Olivia in California, The sisters didnt know if they would ever fit in and that California will ever feel like home,
I really liked this book because it went back in time where there wasnt freedom for certain colors and I wasnt alive to ever connect or feel the way people felt back then.
One quote that stood out to me in the book was, “ Someone splashed water on me and I looked around at the faces of colored boys and girls who had probably never tasted possum meat, whose fingertips had never been bloodied by the cotton plant, who had never been spit at or told to go to the back door, who were accustomed to looking white people in the eye, and I wished that Ruth was there.
Ruth understood. More than these boys and girls ever could, ” It stood out to me because Leah felt alone because thats when she moved with her aunt and she didnt think anyone understood her, I really liked this book and I would highly recommend this book to anyone,


for the sake of this review I have chosen to be extremely politically incorrect and call this girl black, Yes, I understand that she is African American and I pinky promise not to do it again

I must have read this booktimes, at least.

That's how good it is,

This book was my first introduction into a more emotional, tragedy based genre, books such as TFIOS, If I Stay, Out of My Mind, or Thirteen Reasons Why all highly recommended, by the way.


Leah thinks differently from any other girl you have ever encountered, For one, it's. For another, she's a black girl living in a white power based community,

Her aunt is the sweetest woman, as well as her husband, and her extremely naive sister makes for several "teaching moments" for Leah, in which she must take responsibility to be the teacher and try and figure our how they must survive at the peak of tragedy in their lives.


There's also some unprecedented struggle at having to adjust to a community where blacks are welcomed, Part of being "back home" for Leah is being oriented around whites rather than being oriented with whites, When Leah doesn't want to let go of what else she has at home, I understand that it's hard to let go of that, too,

I've read what some may consider more "mature" books, so I'll put this recommendation more on the/yr, old scale, but today, withyr, olds reading even crazier, more mature themed books, go ahead and hand it to your eight year old,

Go ahead.

And make sure to get them a library card, too, The Red Rose Box is set in the year of, Leah is turning ten years old, and receives a present of a red rose box full of many items that Leah has not had the opportunity to see.
She receives nail polish, lipstick, slippers, and jewelry, This present comes from her aunt, along with a letter to Leahs mother, This letter warrants a trip to Los Angeles to visit their aunt, Leah experiences life without segregation when visiting Los Angeles and does not want to return home, With devastating events that happen, the family comes to realize that they should cherish the life they had, Intermediate children will learn some about segregation in the south and will be able to form a connection with the characters due to how real they seem.
I loved the characters and the whole storyline, But I feel like the main character didn't change or develop their character, When I read the synopsis I felt so excited to read the book then I read the book and it was different than I expected, On her tenth birthday, Leah receives a surprise gift from glamorous Aunt Olivia, Mama's only sister, who lives in Los Angeles,   It is a red rose box,   Not many people inLouisiana have seen such a beautiful traveling case, covered with red roses, filled with jewelry, silk bedclothes, expensive soaps, . . and train tickets to California,   Soon after, Leah and her sister, Ruth, find themselves in Hollywood, far away from cotton fields and Jim Crow laws,   To Leah, California feels like freedom,   But when disaster strikes back home, Leah and Ruth have to stay with Aunt Olivia permanently,   Will freedom ever feel like home Leah Jane Hopper turns ten and gets a beautiful red rose box in the mail from her Aunt Olivia, There is a letter inside for her mother and tickets to go visit the aunt and her husband in California, Leah immediately sees the freedom available in California when contrasted with her home in Sulphur, Louisiana, It's the difference from one side of the Mason Dixon Line to the other the wide net cast by the Jim Crow South, This is a bittersweet tale that will take your breath away at times, It is a treasure and I highly recommend it, The Red Rose Box was written by Brenda Woods, This contemporary realistic fiction book is intended to be read by intermediate and advanced age groups, This particular book won several awards and honors, In, The Red Rose Box won the Coretta Scott King Honor, Pen Center USA Finalist, and the Judy Lopez Memorial Award, In, the book won the FOCAL Award, I rated this book as a five,

The Red Rose Box is about two little African American sisters who grew up in the South during segregation, During two separate visits with their rich Aunt, their final visit becomes a permanent stay in California, This book is about transitioning from a life of poor to rich, segregated to freedom, and what it really means to a twelve year old,

The plot reveals an emotional transition for a twelve year old girl, Leah, as she is placed into her Aunts care, When you are born and raised in your home, you know this as your home, However, once you step outside of this comfort zone, then you are given a chance to compare and contrast your home environment to the outside world, Leah begins to understand that Jim Crow laws and segregation shouldnt exist, The characters are used in a way to display hardworking Southern people, Leahs grandmother and mother cook a big country meal for her birthday, instead of providing gifts, The parents taught Leah and her sister, Ruth, values of love, home, and family, The rich Aunt Olivia and her husband, Bill, lovingly take the children in after a hurricane tragic that took their parents lives, However, Leah begins to understand that materialistic items will never replace the love and loss of her parents, As for the language, the book is written in Southern drawl, As Leah begins to sample some of Aunt Olivias rich world, Leah begins to recognize the language differences and starts to correct her sisters wording, The red rose box, a birthday gift to Leah from Aunt Olivia, becomes a private, personal storage box, No matter how beautiful and expensive the box cost, Leah realizes that she can storage her most cherished items for future reflection,

As for the book itself, there are no illustrations in this paperback version, The cover design has bright and intense colors with rainbow shading, The picture is two African American sisters, dressed in Sunday best clothing, waiting with their luggage and the red rose box, The rainbow shading provides a positive feeling that these two little girls are going to experience a happier time in their lives, The back cover continues the rainbow shading with two illustrations: a rose and a train, A brief summary of the book is provided for the reader,

Overall, The Red Rose Box is an excellent story of values of love, family, and home, Even though, segregation was unjustified in this time period, Leah shows the reader that home is where your heart feels the most comfort, A rich lifestyle can provide clothes, a better education, and in Leahs case, freedom however, Leah recognizes that she would rather spend her time back with her parents and their simple life.
This book provides history of segregation, oneroom school houses, and simple living, During Black History Month, a history teacher could use this book as a learning tool for younger readers,
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