Love Is Loud: How Diane Nash Led the Civil Rights Movement
by Sandra Neil Wallace; illus. by Bryan Collier
Primary, Intermediate    Wiseman/Simon    48 pp.
1/23    9781534451032    $18.99
e-book ed.  9781534451049    $10.99

“During the 1960s, Diane Nash was one of the most influential and effective leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, yet most people don’t know who she is.” Wallace’s latest picture-book collaboration with Collier (Between the Lines) seeks to correct that. The second-person narrative highlights major moments in Nash’s life, beginning with her birth in Chicago and moving quickly through her childhood and high school years. When she moves to Tennessee to attend Fisk University, Nash experiences for the first time the overt segregation from which her parents wanted to shield her. This begins her commitment to civil rights activism, starting with integrating Nashville’s lunch counters. “You stay BRAVE. You won’t cave. Sit-in after sit-in. As hot coffee burns and sugar turns hair white, you focus on love. And when you get arrested for ordering a sandwich, more students fill the seats each week—one hundred, two hundred, three hundred strong!” Collier’s watercolor and collage illustrations beautifully complement the text. The book opens with images of Nash’s parents cradling her as a baby and then of Nash, as a small child, being hugged by her grandmother, highlighting the love that encouraged her activism. In later images, Nash stares directly at the reader with a look of determination on her face. The back matter includes an author’s note that discusses gender discrimination within the movement, an illustrator’s note, a timeline, a bibliography, and video resources.

From the January/February 2023 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.