I’ve been wanting to read more about Dr. King, so I was really excited to get the opportunity to read an early copy of the YA edition of King: A Life. I’m impressed with how Eig was able to condense the much longer adult version without feeling like it was ‘dumbed down.’ This touches on many important milestones in Dr. King’s life. It’s easy to see the amount of research that went into this in order to portray Dr. King’s life as a whole. I learned so much about Dr. King and the civil rights movement while reading this that we were never taught in history classes. I also really appreciated the notes added at the end of the book that discuss the timeline of Dr. King’s life, questions for readers to think about after finishing, and the quote of a child asking if Dr. King had tattoos since it forces people to think of Dr. King as a person. I had both the ebook and audiobook for this, andI can’t recommend the audiobook enough. The narration by Dion Graham kept me fully invested and invoked so many emotions while reading that may not have hit as hard eyeball reading. This is such a compelling read that everyone should experience.

I have been interested in reading the author's 600+ page tome, ever since seeing it on Barack Obama's reading list. Thanks to NetGalley and McMillan's Children's Publishing Group, I have the opportunity to read the Young Adult Edition. YA non-fiction is my new go-to for understanding a topic in all of its complexity. The subject matter is not watered down, but it has been edited for brevity. At the end, the author summarizes a timeline, his purpose of writing about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and some common misconceptions about who he was as a human as well as a leader.

King: A Life gives such a multi-faceted view of Dr. King. The author introduces his childhood and college years, which are especially interesting for the fact that he dated a white woman briefly, and advanced in his studies, yet plagiarized some of his schoolwork. As we follow Dr. King's legacy, we see the turmoil both literally and figuratively. We see that he was not a saint or a superhero, but a real person who, though flawed, led a great movement.

I learned so much more about the civil rights movement and the events that surrounded it, as well as the geographical challenges of appealing to northern states who didn't actually hold the moral standard as history tries to portray. I grew up in St. Louis, and was appalled to learn that Brown vs. Board of education was not implemented for years afterward in Missouri. This book will hopefully invite readers to learn more about the civil rights movement and the laws that were changed because of Dr. King.

This book would be perfect for studying a more nuanced portrayal of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and I also recommend reading More Than a Dream: The Radical March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom by Yohuru Williams and Michael G. Long. These should both be required reading in high school history classes.