In lengthy monologues well suited to reader's theater, three members of the fictional Little family speak about life in Jim Crow-era South. In 1927 Loretta Little lives with her sharecropper father and siblings and often witnesses their white landlord demean her father. When Loretta and her sisters find an abandoned baby, they name him Roly and take him in. By the time Roly is a teenager, he and his family own some land. The second narrator, Roly recounts an incident in which a group of white men poisons his family's farm animals. Roly marries and has a daughter, Aggie, but his wife leaves the family to pursue a different life up north. As a girl in the 1960s, third and final narrator Aggie accompanies her Aunt Loretta as she attempts to register to vote. Having seen her struggle through a rigged and unfair exam of arbitrary questions, Aggie helps her aunt study for the test and raise money for the poll tax so that she can vote. Through their personal narratives, the Littles guide readers through four decades of daily life, hardship, and maddeningly slow political and social change. (Ages 9-13)

From a bestselling and award-winning husband and wife team comes an innovative, beautifully illustrated novel that delivers a front-row seat to the groundbreaking moments in history that led to African Americans earning the right to vote.

"Right here, I'm sharing the honest-to-goodness." -- Loretta

"I'm gon' reach back, and tell how it all went. I'm gon' speak on it. My way." -- Roly

"I got more nerve than a bad tooth. But there's nothing bad about being bold." -- Aggie B.

Loretta, Roly, and Aggie B., members of the Little family, each present the vivid story of their young lives, spanning three generations. Their separate stories -- beginning in a cotton field in 1927 and ending at the presidential election of 1968 -- come together to create one unforgettable journey.

Through an evocative mix of fictional first-person narratives, spoken-word poems, folk myths, gospel rhythms and blues influences, Loretta Little Looks Back weaves an immersive tapestry that illuminates the dignity of sharecroppers in the rural South. Inspired by storytelling's oral tradition, stirring vignettes are presented in a series of theatrical monologues that paint a gripping, multidimensional portrait of America's struggle for civil rights as seen through the eyes of the children who lived it. The novel's unique format invites us to walk in their shoes. Each encounters an unexpected mystical gift, passed down from one family member to the next, that ignites their experience what it means to reach for freedom.