Book To Film #3: The Story of Ruby Bridges

The Story of Ruby Bridges, written by Robert Coles and illustrated by George Ford, and the film it inspired, Disney's Ruby Bridges, are resources that I use in my fifth grade class every year. The story of the civil rights movement in America comes alive when I use this book and film. The book tells the story of how a small child embodied the hopes and dreams of equality for the African-American community in 196o.

The book tells Ruby's story from the perspective of a counselor who witnessed the events first hand. The movie allows viewers to walk in Ruby's shoes and see the events from her perspective. The book does not allow the horror of the events to be realized on a personal level, whereas the movie has moments of terror as a small child walks a gauntlet of racial slurs and threats of violence.

The movie goes into great detail about the personal prices paid by Ruby's family. Her father loses his job, she is denied an integrated learning environment for over a year, and she must endure the ugly face of racism on a daily basis. This film has never bored my students- in fact, they are often shocked by the situation that up until now they have only read about. The fact that black and white students were not allowed to attend school together usually comes as quite a shock. They are stunned to learn that I, their teacher, never attended school with any African-Americans until I went to college.

The book and the movie share the moment when Ruby prays for those who try and block her entrance to an all white school. Ruby's teacher and the way she spends her first year, isolated from the other students, is depicted in both the movie and the book.

The book is a wonderful way to introduce a story that most students are unaware of and the movie is a culmination of a civil rights unit that personalizes an ugly episode in American history. A wonderful starting point for this unit is the famous painting by Norman Rockwell of Ruby Bridges being escorted to school by U.S. Federal Marshalls.

Ruby Bridges wrote Through My Eyes, a first hand account of the events depicted in the film and book by Cole. I have not read Bridges's book but it was favorably reviewed by School Library Journal.