Wilma Rudolph (1940-1994) won three gold medals in the 1960 Olympics, but her accomplishments off the running track were applause-worthy, too. In the full-throated and galvanizing picture book Go, Wilma, Go!, debut children's author Amira Rose Davis and veteran kids' writer Michael G. Long (More Than a Dream) team up with illustrator Charnelle Pinkney Barlow (Everything in Its Place) to cheer Rudolph's racial-justice work and athleticism.
After Clarksville, Tennessee's Rudolph wins her Olympic medals, she tours Europe, where she notices something. As she tells a reporter, "In America, they push me around because I'm a Negro. Here in Europe, they push me to the front." Rudolph makes a decision regarding a planned celebration in her honor back in segregated Clarksville: "She won't go to Wilma Rudolph Day--unless the leaders include Black people in everything, in the parade and the banquet." Will the town's leaders do right by not just its star citizen but all of Clarksville's Black residents?
The book's titular refrain reliably pops up to spur Rudolph on, whether she's competing in a race or fighting for fairness; the last page tidily brings together both strands, reminding readers that "the race to freedom is not a sprint, but a marathon. Let's go!" Some contextualizing dates within the main text might have been useful to readers, but the message of Go, Wilma, Go! is timeless--and immediate. Barlow's digitally tweaked collage illustrations, full of hand-painted cut-paper shapes, appear three-dimensional and seem to invite young readers to touch. --Nell Beram, freelance writer and YA author