This book was read to me when I was in the fifth grade. As a result I always wanted to have a black friend. It is no longer P.C. but the story is charming. I wish it could be sanitized and published again.
Bubba
May 27, 2007
Not since me and Wilkes Booth Lincoln been born
As a second grade pupil at E. Rivers Grammar School in Atlanta in 1933, I had Miss Wimberly as my teacher. She read to the class every day while we digested our lunches. I think I remember her reading every word of MISS MINERVA and WILLIAM GREEN HILL. Periodically, I have reread my copy that I probably acquired 50 years ago. With each reading, I have a different perspective. A term for " African-Americans" was used many times and I recall that it was merely a term of identification and never one of derision. On May 4, 1964, I picked up a newspaper in Pueblo, Colorado which gave an account of the finding of a body in an empty railroad coal car on the outskirts of Pueblo. The man was identified as William Green Hill, age 64 . . . penniless and covered with coal dust. When his sister (Mrs. S.A.Hamilton of Covington, Tennessee) was contacted, she reported not having heard of her brother in 15 years. And so, the childhood which Frances Boyd Calhoun had recorded for me in 1909 became the source of sad thoughts. How I wish I had never learned of William Green Hill's sorrowful demise. I would have preferred to remember him as a real, human, lovable little boy. My copy is of the 56th printing with a green dust cover. S. Brewer
