Main Street

A Community Story About Redlining

By: Britt Hawthorne, Tiffany Jewell

Narrated by: Imani Parks

A girl learns how the history of redlining has affected her neighborhood in this intergenerational audiobook about racism, community action, and resilience by two New York Times bestselling authors.

Olivia can’t wait to invite her friends to the 62nd annual Main Street Block Party. But when she does, Alison says that Main Street isn’t safe. Olivia’s eyes fill with tears, and she begins to wish that she didn’t live on Main Street at all.

Then, Olivia learns what happened when her neighbor Ms. Effie was about her age: Ms. Effie's family was also told that Main Street wasn’t good enough. The bank wouldn’t give them a loan to buy their house based on where it fell on a color-coded map: Mostly Black people lived near Main Street, so the neighborhood was colored red on the map. To fight back against this practice called redlining, Ms. Effie’s family became friends with their neighbors and got organized.

With engaging text by Britt Hawthorne and Tiffany Jewell, Main Street celebrates what might happen when neighbors come together for a common goal and everybody pitches in.

Features backmatter with an author's note about the full history of redlining and ideas for further engagement with your community!

Critic reviews

Praise for Main Street: A Community Story About Redlining by Britt Hawthorne and Tiffany Jewell; Illustrated by David Wilkerson:

★ “Hawthorne and Jewell make the complexity of redlining easy to understand in this warm, accessible picture book…this will be especially useful for those wanting to launch discussions about what it means to be in community.” —The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, starred review

★ “Excellent … Describing the discriminatory practice of redlining through narrative with great success, this picture book is recommended wherever fiction highlighting themes of social justice is in demand.” —School Library Journal, starred review

“Accurate and valuable historical context … bighearted and tender.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Hawthorne and Jewell introduce the concept of redlining in this digestible first-person story of community care.” — Publishers Weekly