I heard from the African-American mother of a fifteen-year-old son who had just moved to Lake County, Florida from Chicago. She was very concerned about the slaying of Trayvon Martin, and since their new home wasn’t far from Sanford, Florida, (where Martin was fatally shot) she wanted her son to read the book so that he had some sense of the area’s history. She wanted him to know that in 2012, as a young black man in America, he still had to be careful and smart.
