Set in In 1944, Sylvia Mendez’s Mexican American family had recently moved. She and her siblings were not allowed to go to the public school near their farm and were told they had to attend the Mexican school, which had fewer resources and was farther away.

This books tells the story of how Sylvia Mendez’s father and other Mexican American families sued the school district to advocate for rights of their children to attend the same school as the white children.  This book portrays the events surrounding the court case that desegregated California schools seven years before Brown v. Board of Education.