During a time when taking a trip across the nation could be dangerous for Black Americans, one man crafted a guide that changed the lives of millions.

A 2025 Choose to Read Ohio title

In the late 1930s when segregation was legal and Black Americans couldn't visit every establishment or travel everywhere they wanted to safely, a New Yorker named Victor Hugo Green decided to do something about it. Green wrote and published a guide that listed places where his fellow Black Americans could be safe in New York City. The guide sold like hot cakes! Soon customers started asking Green to make a guide to help them travel and vacation safely across the nation too. With the help of his mail carrier co-workers and the African American business community, Green's guide allowed millions of African Americans to travel safely and enjoy traveling across the nation.

In the first picture book about the creation and distribution of The Green Book, author Keila Dawson and illustrator Alleanna Harris tell the story of the man behind it and how this travel guide opened the road for a safer, more equitable America.

BIO

Keila V. Dawson is an award-winning author who writes fiction and nonfiction picture books. She is a co-editor and contributor to No World Too Big: Young People Fighting Global Climate Change, No Voice Too Small: Fourteen Young Americans Making History, and the forthcoming No Brain the Same: Neurodivergent Young Activists Shaping Our Future. She is the author Opening the Road: Victor Hugo Green and His Green Book, Yumbo Gumbo translated into the Spanish bilingual El gumbo más delicioso/Yumbo Gumbo and The King Cake Baby. A New Orleans native, Dawson has also lived and worked in states across the U.S., and abroad in the Philippines, Japan, and Egypt. She lives in Cincinnati, Ohio.

REVIEWS

"A compelling picture book that introduces the history of segregation and its impact in the U. S. to young readers." -- School Library Journal

[H]  Beaming Books  /  January 26, 2021

0.6" H x 10.1" L x 8.9" W (0.93 lbs) 40 pages

For ages 4 to 8