Sometimes the best way to deal with your own problems is to walk in someone else’s shoes and see the world through their eyes. Walking With Miss Millie by Tamara Bundy illustrates this perfectly as young Alice has her life completely altered, yet she is thrown in the path of elderly Miss Millie. As Alice is consumed with the life she left behind and the fact that her father just up and left her and her mom and brother, she learns some valuable lessons from Miss Millie and all that she has endured in her 90+ years all while “helping” to walk Miss Millie’s dog. Miss Millie has seen a lot her life, from loss of loved ones to dealing with racism and segregation in the South leading up to the 1960’s. And by listening to all of this, Alice realizes that her problems, while not going away, can be managed.
While Walking With Miss Millie has so bits of wisdom and life lessons to be gleaned from it, it also is beautifully written in a way that draws one in and gives the reader the feeling they are walking along with Alice and Miss Millie. As Alice learns first hand from Miss Millie what it was like to live through times of segregation and racism, the reader also gets to feel what it was like, uniting readers across the ages. What better unifier is there than the lesson of friendship reaching across race, age and where we are from? One of the most valuable lessons anyone could learn and one that Walking With Miss Millie illustrates beautifully.
This book was sent to Compass Book Ratings for review by Nancy Paulsen Books
Content Analysis:
Profanity/Language: 4 religious exclamations.
Violence/Gore: Character runs bike into back of someone’s leg in anger; mention of Black people having been shot for the color of their skin; second-hand account of someone’s loved one, as well as 25 others, being killed as they marched for the color of their skin; account of child dying because of being denied services from a hospital because of the color of the child’s skin; mention of someone’s father being harsh with a child (no details given, but alluded to the fact that he is abusive).
Sex/Nudity: None
Mature Subject Matter:
Divorce, racism, child abuse.
Alcohol / Drug Use:
None
