As the subtitle indicates, 15 landmark American speeches, each preceded by an introduction from Bolden that directly conveys needed history to the under-12 set.

This collection treats readers not only to well-known oratory, such as Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream,” Frederick Douglass’ “What, to the Slave, Is the Fourth of July,” and Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman” (rendered here in standard English as “I Am a Woman’s Rights”), but also to some that are not as famous but still a necessary part of the discourse about what the American experiment meant and still means to different people affected by it. Seneca chief Red Jacket’s explanation to white American missionary Jacob Cram that “we do not wish to destroy your religion, or take it from you; we only wish to enjoy our own” is powerfully resonant today, for instance. What separates this collection from other anthologies that celebrate spoken patriotism is the way Bolden gives readers a critical historical context—explaining, for example, that Patrick Henry was enslaving black people even as he fiercely opposed Britain's enslaving the white colonists with unreasonable taxes. Velasquez contributes luminous oil portraits, rather disappointingly portraying Truth as an angry black woman but otherwise ably giving strong faces to these strong voices.

A golden celebration of the multicultural voices who demand that the U.S.—and the world—do better. (author’s note, illustrator’s note, timeline, sources, permissions) (Nonfiction. 10-14)

-Kirkus Review

I did the audiobook for this one. I thought that the audiobook would be fitting for famous speeches (one would hope with superb narrators) for which I was not disappointed. This was narrated by Prentice Onayemi and Lisa Renee Pitts who were magnificent. The speeches (while a majority are white men...as is everything in U.S history) there was a surprising amount of diversity among the speeches selected. Each speech was prefaced with historical context to the individual, the time, and the reason/events surrounding giving the speech. I will say as a historian I was quite ashamed that I had only known about half of these and had heard of about 75% of these. So, I will say this book was a delight and a fancy to behold the change in rhetoric over time. The was a portion at the end in which the illustrator talked about their journey of illustrating the book which made me sad I did not have a physical copy.

Speeches included:
Patrick Henry, “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death”
George Washington, Farewell Address
Red Jacket, “We Never Quarrel about Religion”
Frederick Douglass, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?”
Sojourner Truth, “I Am a Woman’s Rights”
Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
Theodore Roosevelt, “Citizenship in a Republic”
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, “The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself”
Lou Gehrig, “Farewell to Baseball”
Langston Hughes, “On the Blacklist All Our Lives”
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, “We Choose to Go to the Moon”
Martin Luther King, Jr., “I Have a Dream”
Fannie Lou Hamer, “I Question America”
Cesar Chavez, Address to the Commonwealth Club of California, 1984
Hillary Rodham Clinton, “Women’s Rights Are Human Rights” ( )