Judeah Reynolds was nine years old and the youngest witness to the murder of George Floyd in 2020.
Two years later, Reynolds released “A Walk to the Store,” which details what she witnessed that day.
The book includes worksheets and exercises to help children who witness traumatic incidents process.
The youngest witness to George Floyd’s death in 2020 published a children’s book detailing her perspective and the weeks to follow.
Judea Reynolds, 11, released her book “A Walk to the Store” on Friday, the day Floyd would have celebrated his 49th birthday.
Floyd was killed on Memorial Day 2020, when former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin held his knee to Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes.
Reynolds was nine years old when she witnessed Floyd’s death after walking to a store to buy snacks with her then 17-year-old cousin, Darnella Frazier, who had recorded Chauvin and Floyd.
According to ABC News, Reynolds was the youngest witness to testify against Chauvin.
“I was sad and kind of mad cause I felt like he was stopping him from breathing,” Reynolds said during the trial, according to ABC News.
“A Walk to the Store” depicts the death of Floyd from her perspective when she was nine, illustrated by Darcy Bell-Myers, and includes worksheets with exercises provided by Aruba Emotional Health Services to help children process traumatic events, according to the book’s website.
According to CNN, Reynolds was inspired to write a book by Cameron Brundidge, whose book was authored by her mother, Sheletta Brundidge educated people about autism.
Reynolds would work with Brundidge to author the children’s book, according to CNN.
“This book is all about a movement,” Brundidge told CBS. “It’s not about the sadness she experienced, or the tragedy, but how she turned that into triumph. She took a walk. She walked to the store, she walked away from the store. She is walking into her destiny, and her purpose.”
Lily Coyle, the owner of Beaver’s Pond Press, the company that published Reynold’s book, told CNN that she struggled to find a way to tell Reynold’s story without being hurtful.
“I don’t want to put a children’s book out in the world that hurts children or makes life harder for people. It needs to be a tool for healing, and we want to bring grace to this horrible situation,” Coyle told CNN.
According to the book’s website, the publisher is fronting all the cost of the book’s productions and paying Reynolds 60 percent of the profits.
“You don’t have to be scared of stuff all the time, y’all can be brave and strong and fight for it because sometimes you have to fight for stuff and be brave for stuff,” Reynolds told Fox 9.
Courtesy *Insider*
