Listen to My Dream

The book Listen To My Dream, a children's story about Martin Luther King, Jr, was published in December, 2009. The publisher is Pearl Books, LLC. The book covers the life of King from childhood through his death in 1968 and is written as a narrative poem. It opens with King asking his mother why he was black and wasn't treated like others. Later, his teacher encouraged him to dream big dreams to help others. He set his mind to do that very thing. As a 'colored man' (a term for Negroes at the time), he didn't have the same privileges in the south that whites had. Then when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white person and was arrested, King organized a boycott of the Montgomery bus system until blacks were treated the same as others. Eventually in 1956 the Supreme Court ruled that such discrimination was against the law. The children's part of the book is written as a poem, emphasizing the importance of setting goals and sticking to them. It ends after King's funeral following his murder on April 4, 1968. Listen To My Dream is a 40 page book written in two parts. The first poetic part, as mentioned above, outlines King's life and influence in bringing about racial equality. Part two gives more details about the civil rights movement and how King influenced it; this part is written as a narrative and has no pictures. Debi and Michael Pearl drew all the illustrations for the first part of the book. At times the poem only hints at something and then, a detail is given on the picture. An example of this is the statement that it was his teacher, Miss Lemon from Oglethorpe Elementary who prodded him on to have a dream and believe in it. The focus of the book Listen To My Dream is on King's part in bringing about civil rights. In that Martin Luther King should be recognized and remembered.