Come 2021, The Green Book’s Creator Gets the Kid Lit Treatment

For me, I didn’t learn about the iconic ‘Green Book’ in my K-12 school years. In fact, it was later in my young adult years where I was able to read and learn more about the important role the book had in not just American history, but Black History. An invaluable resource that aided Black folks traveling across the country, it has served not just as a Godsend but a community-building tool. In recent years, there have been more creatives working to bring attention to the efforts of the creator, Victor Hugo Green, and the lives he helped protect through his work. 2018’s cinematic offering, Green Book, boasted A-List talent and contained strong performances but later revealed a film that received critical backlash from a white savior narrative, from many critics, as well as the controversy that came from the creative team completely leaving musician Don Shirley’s family out of the filmmaking process. In just the very first episode of HBO’s newest series, Lovecraft Country, (which we’re all devouring) we can see how the ‘Green Book’ can be fleshed out, even for a fictional purpose (In the show the Negro Motorist Green Book by Victor Hugo Green is fashioned in the show as “The Safe Negro Travel Guide” created and updated by Uncle George, Courtney B. Vance’s character). There is love and consideration written in, which acknowledges the curation, usage, and necessity of the ‘Green Book’ as a tool that Black Americans used to navigate an unsafe America years ago. And that force of…