REMEMBER AS YOU PASS ME BY

A time of turbulent change in the United States is echoed in the relationship between best friends Silvy and Mabelee. Brown v. Board of Education has just been adjudicated, and 12-year-old Silvy’s small Texas hometown is unsettled. Until then, there was no problem for a white girl and a black girl being best friends. Suddenly, Silvy’s family is urging her to make friends with her own kind, although they couch it in vague terms. Mabelee doesn’t come around the way she used to and even starts calling her former best friend “Miss Silvy.” While Silvy is trying to figure this all out, none of the adults are acting normal and she cannot comprehend why lines are being drawn between the races. Apparently based on personal experience, Pérez’s story pulls no punches. She uses contemporary language freely and shows how seemingly “good, Christian” whites turned mean and dangerous. Silvy’s father seems not to act or respond to the growing crisis, but he surprises Silvy when he needs to. Ultimately, learning that bravery can come in small but crucial actions is a fundamental lesson for the now-wiser but sadder Silvy. Sure to provoke many on both sides of the political spectrum, this is an honest, heartfelt and truthful depiction of a small Southern town during the ’60s. (Fiction. 8-12)