It took Portland author Phillip Hoose several years to track down Claudette Colvin and persuade her to let him tell her story. She had fled her hometown, Montgomery, Alabama, not long after a landmark 1956 court case that resulted from her arrest for refusing to give a white woman her seat on a city bus. Unlike Rosa Parks, whose similar refusal nine months later led to the famous bus boycott, her brave stand, which inspired Parks and essentially launched the Civil Rights Movement, had gone largely unacknowledged.

“Claudette Colvin: I Want Freedom Now!” by Claudette Colvin and Phillip Hoose, illustrated by Bea Jackson. Farrar Straus Giroux. $19.99 Ages 4-8

The NAACP chose Parks to be the public face of the bus boycott, rather than Colvin, because they felt Parks was more acceptable to whites and thus stood a better chance of winning hearts, minds and lawsuits. Parks was middle-class, married and employed, while the teenage Colvin, by the time the case came to trial, was poor, pregnant and unwed. Some of her own community felt she was a troublemaker. Thus her decision to move to New York City after the lawsuit and avoid the limelight.

When Hoose proposed telling her story, her response was “Can you get it to the children?” As a teenage activist, the idea of inspiring other young people seems to have appealed to her. In Hoose’s young adult book, “Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice,” the 15-year-old Colvin’s story of determination to stand up for her “constitutional rights” on the bus is finally told, along with the courage it took for her to pursue the resulting lawsuit all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. That court finally declared Alabama’s bus segregation unconstitutional.

“Twice Toward Justice” earned Hoose the 2009 National Book Award, and he insisted on taking Colvin with him to accept the prize. But that was 16 years ago, and the new picture book version of her story, “Claudette Colvin: I Want Freedom Now!” is designed to appeal to a whole new generation.

Co-authored by Colvin (who is now 85), the text tells the story largely in her own words, starting with what life was like in the Deep South during Jim Crow, with details that will resonate with young people. It wasn’t just the segregated drinking fountains and lunch counters. Can you imagine, as a child, not being allowed to try on the clothes you want to buy — having to trace your foot on a grocery bag to give to the shoe store owner?

But she had been learning about Black history at school, and one day when a white woman demanded her seat on the bus, she refused to move. “I felt the weight of strong Black women pressing down on me — Sojourner Truth on one shoulder, Harriet Tubman on the other.” She decided she didn’t want merely to hope or pray for freedom — she wanted it now. She describes how policemen had to drag her off the bus, with “schoolbooks flying.” They handcuffed her, drove her to jail and locked her in a cell.

She refused to plead guilty and pay a fine. A judge found her guilty of all three charges in a matter of minutes. She was angry that the trial and the bus boycott that she “sparked”— and Parks led — accomplished nothing. So she agreed to join a lawsuit against the city, along with three other women (one who was also a teenager). It was a dangerous choice. (Hoose doesn’t say why, but the KKK was very violent at the time.) Her testimony helped win the case. “So it was that in my young life I took two stands for justice,” she concludes.

The evocative illustrations by Bea Jackson lend enormous charm and power to the book. Jackson perfectly captures the innocence, hope and anger in the face of the teenaged Colvin, as well as the ambience of the 1950s. The depiction of Claudette being dragged off the bus is made all the more horrific by the contrast between the tough sunglasses-wearing policemen and Colvin, clothed in an innocent schoolgirl sweater-and-skirt combination with saddle shoes and bobby socks.

And I loved a touch I’d never seen in a picture book before: two different endpapers. The ones at the front show Claudette boarding a segregated bus, by a bench labeled Colored Only. The back endpapers show the same bench, with nothing written on it, and the same bus, now integrated.

It’s a powerful, well-told story that merits telling —and retelling — now more than ever.

Amy MacDonald is a children’s book author who lives in Portland and Vinalhaven. She may be reached at info@amymacdonald.com.