The Oldest Student: How Mary Walker Learned to Read

Annual Goodreads Choice Awards reading project: Read all the Picture Book nominees! (20 of 20). Project complete!

The story is a bit flat on the page, but the heart of it is quite inspiring as a Black woman who was born a slave in 1848 finally learns to read in the 1960s at the unimaginable age of

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116.

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Born into slavery in 1848 and freed at the age of fifteen, Mary Walker had always wanted to learn to read - something she associated with the freedom of flight. But the hard circumstances of her life - enslavement, poverty, the necessity of hard work - left little time to learn, and there were few

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opportunities. She treasured the Bible she had been given however, and many, many years later, when she was 114 years old, she finally got her chance to learn...

I was tearing up as I read The Oldest Student: How Mary Walker Learned to Read, and I thank the online friend who recommended it to me. With an engaging, inspirational tale from author Rita Lorraine Hubbard, and beautiful artwork from illustrator Oge Mora, who won a Caldecott Honor for her Thank You, Omu, this was a rewarding picture-book to peruse, both from an aesthetic and a storytelling perspective. I appreciated the inclusion of the various photographs of Mary, on the endpapers, and the author's brief note at the end. The inclusion of a bibliography on the colophon was a little confusing - I thought it should have been at the rear of the book, with the note - but also welcome. There is something terribly satisfying about the idea of a long-deferred dream finally coming to fruition, and this true-life tale certainly taps into that. There is also something terribly poignant about all of the injustices that Mary Walker had to face, all of the roadblocks between her and her dream. I've seen quite a bit of discussion of late, in the children's book world, of how and when to present the evils of slavery to very young children. For all that it does not focus on slavery throughout the narrative, this simple but uplifting tale of a woman who had to wait more than a century to learn to read, does a better job, I think, in capturing the inhumanity of that institution, than many another, more explicit title. Highly recommended, to all picture-book readers, whether they are looking for stories that address the legacy of slavery, or for uplifting, inspirational stories of people who never gave up on their dream.

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Fabulous Story. A true story. I’m not sure I would want to live to be over 120 years old, but what Mary endured and still took time to learn. She recognized that there was something she needed to be free – the ability to read. This story is amazing. It’s a powerful tool to show children you

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are never too old to learn something new.

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This inspirational book tells the true story of Mary Walker who had a dream to learn to read. She was a slave as a young girl until the Emancipation Proclamation freed her at 15 yrs old. She was married by twenty years old and had a son. Mary was a hard worker throughout her life. She worked long

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hours with only a half-day off on Saturday. She took care of her growing family, worked as a sharecropper, and long hours cooking, cleaning, and babysitting to make money. She worked to help others in need, too. By the time Mary was in her 90s her entire family had passed away. When she was 114 years old she had the opportunity to finally learn how to read and she embraced it. Mary worked very hard, once again, but this time it was to learn to read.

Critical analysis: This is a great story to teach children the power of having a dream and persisting, determination and grit. Children can make inferences about feelings, learn to see from different perspectives, Children can explore authentic stories about this time period in history and make moral judgments and learn about ethical responsibilities.

Favorite quote "When I am free, I'll go where I want, and I will rest when I want, and I'll learn to read, too.

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I love this celebration of the strength of Mary Walker, who learned to read at the age of 114.