Deborah Wiles signed and sold plenty of copies of her latest novel, “Revolution,” during her reading at Turnrow Books in Greenwood Thursday, but she said the chance to visit local schools was the real highlight of her visit.
Wiles, an award-winning children’s and young-adult author, was in town to promote “Revolution,” which is set in Greenwood and explores the events of the highly charged civil rights movement here during the summer of 1964 through the eyes of her 12-year-old protagonist, Sunny.
Prior to the event at Turnrow, Wiles met and spoke with classes at Amanda Elzy High School, East Elementary School, Pillow Academy and Mississippi Valley State University.
At each stop, she particularly savored the opportunity to listen to some of her readers, she said. Meeting Greenwood-area children of the same age as her characters — and talking about the mixed progress over the 50 years since Freedom Summer — was “very powerful,” Wiles said.
“This was one of my dearest hopes, to be able to visit the schools,” Wiles said. “Being able to meet the people you write for was amazing.”
Wiles made at least a half-dozen research trips to Greenwood while working on the novel, which draws inspiration from many of the real events and local people that made Greenwood a focus of national attention during that summer. She said walking around town during this visit — her first since the book’s publication — she was struck by the location of many the scenes from the novel and felt the presence of some of her characters.
“I kept thinking they were going to come up the street,” she said.
Francine Jaume, a second-grade teacher at East Elementary School in Leflore County, was one of the teachers who played host to Wiles on Thursday. Jaume said the author had really connected with her class.
“She captivated their attention,” Jaume said. “I think she really empowered them as writers and storytellers.”
Tyanna Watkins, a junior at Amanda Elzy High School, said that some of the themes Wiles touched on while visiting Watkins’ U.S. history class connected with much of what the students had been learning.
Watkins was at Turnrow Thursday evening to meet Wiles again and to get a book signed, an experience she called “really cool.”
Rob Duren, Watkins’ history teacher at Amanda Elzy, said his students have spent most of the school year so far studying the civil rights movement.
“She summed it up well,” Duren said of Wiles’ visit to his classroom. “It really helped students connect history to today, to think about how it affects their own lives.”
At Thursday evening’s event at Turnrow, much of the discussion turned toward some of the lingering challenges concerning racism, equality and civil rights.
Wiles and several teachers in the audience all said it was often difficult to explain desegregation and some of the other triumphs of the civil rights movement to young students in schools that are only slightly more racially integrated.
Still, Wiles said the challenges didn’t make her shy away from writing about tough topics, even considering the young age of her average reader.
“What I do is write for the youngest person I can reach, because reading has the power to change things,” she said. In “Revolution,” that drive led Wiles to an often-frank and meticulously researched book — not always staple qualities of children’s literature.
“I don’t want to write revisionist history,” Wiles said. “I want kids to see the reality of segregation and the fight for change.”
• Contact Bryn Stole at 581-7235 or bstole@gwcommonwealth.com.
