April 1963.  Birmingham Alabama.  Letitia lives her young life with a family who loves her.  She enjoys the freedom of youth and loves to embark on adventures with her brother.  Her family shares a tight bond.

Martha Ann lives with her family as well and dreams of the future, pretty dresses and music feel her thoughts.  Martha Ann’s father is often angry and she can hear him from her room when he yells at her mom.  This unsettles Martha Ann’s sense of comfort in her own home, causing an almost always existing tension.

Both girls live in Birmingham.  They do not travel in the same circles and they do not know each other.  Letitia in black and Martha Ann is white.

As the story unfolds both girls witness the civil rights movement through very different eyes.  From the bombing of the Baptist Church, the assassination of Martin Luther King, and of course, the Children’s March, where briefly the girls will meet.  Letitia feels the pressures pouring down around her and her family friends of color.  A tension builds around her of the unjustness of it all.  Martha Ann witnesses what is happening as an outsider looking in, but can not help but begin to understand what prejudice is and how it is a part of her very life. 

The events of 1963 affect the girls in different ways.  As the two girls grow and mature their paths will cross again in more ways than one.

In a way, as I closed this book two words seemed to hang in the air.  Haunting and powerful.  Haunting, because the images of what happened during that time period seem to be forever etched within me, although I did not live during the time.  Powerful, because Rosalie takes this hard subject and softens it, making it personal and approachable, about two young girls who lived during a time that should not be forgotten or its importance lessened with time.

Written for a younger audience to understand, March With Me shares a powerful fictional story based on historical truths.  The truth of the children’s march for me is one that pulls at my heart and takes my breath away.  To me, this is a story based on acts that while I was not alive during the time of the march, I am well aware of it. 

Rosalie Turner uses two young protagonists, one white, one black, to tell what happened during that time.  I thoroughly enjoyed looking at this event from the two cultures, and found that a smart way to write this book.  It is so easy to think of it as one-sided, Rosalie makes us go beyond the common thinking. 

There are lessons for all of us here.  For those who lived it, whose who remember it, and even for people who like me who were not around at the time, but have learned about the civil rights movement and the children’s march.  This is a story everyone should read and really think about.  As in most things in life, it really isn’t all black and white.