How the Word is Passed, by Clint Smith

     How the Word is Passed: Remembering Slavery and How it Shaped America by Clint Smith is the complete title of this book adapted for young readers (like you and me!) by Sonja Cherry-Paul. In this non-fiction book, Smith visits seven places - six within the United States and one in West Africa - that are crucial to understanding the full story of the history of this country. As Smith explains in the book, we cannot know our nation's complete history if we exclude or ignore the ugly parts. Slavery was an ugly part of this country's history, and the remnants of that history are still with us today. The many races we have in the U.S. are not treated equally and this stems from how the country got started (and continued into the late 1800s and early 1900s). 

    Two of the sites Smith writes about are in Virginia, which was a pivotal state in our Civil War. Another is in New York City, which surprised me as it will many people, I suppose. In each place Smith digs into the history of the location, what it meant during slavery times as well as what it means today. He asks a lot of questions of a lot of people he meets in each place, and that helps us understand the history but also the complexity of inequality as we still live it today.

    I found this book so interesting and powerful, I bought my human the adult version of the book for Christmas (but don't tell him, because I haven't given it to him yet!). It reminded me of another powerful book about race and inequality, Caste by Isabel Wilkerson. I read that book two years ago, and like How the Word is Passed, found it to be truly lifechanging. I encourage you pups of all ages and colors to read this book, and any book that will ask as many questions as it answers about how we got to be here, today, in a nation striving for peace and equality but with still a lot of work to be done to get there. Books like this will help us get there, if we are brave enough to read them. 5 paws.