The Oldest Student: How Mary Walker Learned to Read

This nonfiction picture-book biography follows Mary Walker’s long wish to learn to read. Enslaved until age 15, she later supported her family through work, including sharecropping. At 114, after outliving her husband and children, she began learning to read in a retirement home. Mary later read aloud from her Bible and lived to 121. Cut-paper collage illustrations accompany her story.