The Adventures of Minnie:
Minnie Saves the Day
by Melodye Benson Rosales
Illustrated in full color by the author

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When Hester Merriweather's father brings her a doll made especially for her by her grandmother, Hester falls in love with it at once. As a young girl living in the Bronzeville section of Chicago in the 1930s, Hester is delighted to have a doll that looks like her and her friends. She puts her doll, Minnie, in her room, and when night falls, Minnie discovers that Hester's toys come to life to talk and play.

Surrounded by a wonderful group of characters, Minnie begins to learn all about life among the toys and the Merriweathers, and when Hester's mother thinks an upcoming party is going to be spoiled, Minnie decides to help out. The result is a delicious story that establishes Minnie Merriweather as a character to cherish. Complete with an afterward that examines aspects of the history and culture of Bronzeville in Hester and Minnie's time, this first book in the Minnie Merriweather series establishes a cast of characters young readers will want to visit again and again.

A History Moment ...

The Adventures of Minnie takes place in Chicago in 1933. Let's step back in time to Hester's and Annie's World and learn more about it through historical accounts and oral retelling of Black women who were young girls growing up in Chicago's Bronzeville community in the 1930's.

A large number of Chicago's African-American population arrived there from many Southern cities and rural communities. By the 1920's almost a million people had moved North. This huge movement, known as the Great Migration, began at the start of the twentieth century.

Many came because of stories that read in the Chicago Defender, which was a national weekly newspaper published for a black audience.

The densely populated group of neighborhoods where most Black Chicagoans lived was called the Black Belt, but by the time the Merriweathers lived there, African-Americans were calling it by a special name: Bronzeville.

Girls took pride and joy in their dolls, but in Bronzeville, its was very difficult for African-American girls to get a doll that looked like them.

There was one doll company that did make brown dolls. It was founded in 1918 by two Black women, Evelyn Berry and Victoria Ross. They were called "Berry's Famous Brown Skin Dolls." And then there were those wonderful, one-of-a-kind homemade brown cloth dolls. What a special treasure these were.

Historical facts have been provided courtesy of halala.com: African American books and authors from Time Warner Trade Publishing