Summary
Illus. in black-and-white. In this companion volume to the award-winning The People Could Fly, Virginia Hamilton traces the history of slavery and the Underground Railroad in America. Thirty-five inspiring stories describe ingenious escapes, desperate measures, and daring protests of former slaves.
Author Notes
Virginia Hamilton was born March 12, 1934. She received a scholarship to Antioch College, and then transferred to the Ohio State University in Columbus, where she majored in literature and creative writing. She also studied fiction writing at the New School for Social Research in New York.
Her first children's book, Zeely, was published in 1967 and won the Nancy Bloch Award. During her lifetime, she wrote over 40 books including The People Could Fly, The Planet of Junior Brown, Bluish, Cousins, the Dies Drear Chronicles, Time Pieces, Bruh Rabbit and the Tar Baby Girl, and Wee Winnie Witch's Skinny. She was the first African American woman to win the Newbery Award, for M. C. Higgins, the Great. She has won numerous awards including three Newbery Honors, three Coretta Scott King Awards, an Edgar Allan Poe Award, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award, and the Hans Christian Andersen Award. She was also the first children's author to receive a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant in 1995.
She died from breast cancer on February 19, 2002 at the age of 67.
(Bowker Author Biography)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 4-9-- From the beginning of slavery in America to the end of the Civil War, hundreds of thousands of slaves escaped to freedom in the Northern U. S. and Canada. Their struggle, as well as the struggle of those who failed and those who were once free and then captured into slavery, comprises the theme of this history. Hamilton offers brief vignettes of almost three dozen figures. Among them are a prince lured to a neighboring kingdom and sold into slavery and a desperate mother whose escape over an icy river inspired a scene in Uncle Tom's Cabin . Well-known figures are included, as are such lesser-known people as Henry Box Brown, who had a sympathetic carpenter nail him into a box and mail him North; or Tice Davids, whose escape in 1831 led to the coining of the term ``underground road.'' Although the emphasis is on African-American figures, biographies of whites who risked prison to help slaves to freedom are also included. The vignettes are lively, readable, and written with a poetic flair that distinguishes this book from most collective biographies for this age range. All of the stories shed a different light upon Hamilton's themes and the factual information she presents as an introduction to each theme. Her research is impeccable. The Dillons' black-and-white illustrations are refreshingly original, conveying the emotion and drama of the experiences described; text and visuals combine to create a powerful and moving whole. Reluctant readers and those with little prior knowledge will find this book unusually approachable with its short chapters, lively writing, and ample white space. --Lyn Miller-Lachmann, Siena College Library, Loudonville, NY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
The inspired pairing of this Newbery winner and these two-time Caldecott recipients has yielded a heartfelt and ultimately heartening chronicle of African Americans from the earliest days of slavery to the 1865 ratification of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which abolished slavery in this country. Made up of succinct yet compelling profiles of celebrated and lesser-known individuals, Hamilton's narrative deftly peels back time's layers and lends an unusual immediacy to this critical chapter in American history. In brief, chronologically arranged entries that even reluctant readers will find easy to absorb, the author first offers accounts of slaves in the pre-Revolutionary War era, many of whom were taken from their homes in Africa and sold to slave traders. Included are descriptions of the appalling shipboard conditions during the ``middle passage'' from Africa to America, which a shocking 30% of the ill-treated passengers did not survive. Hamilton neatly condenses the tales of such notable freedom crusaders as Gabriel Prosser, the Virginia slave who was hanged for organizing a failed revolt in 1800; Tice Davids, allegedly the first slave to escape by traveling the ``underground road'' from Kentucky to Ohio; passionate abolitionists Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass; and Harriet Tubman, the former slave who made more than 20 journeys back to the South to lead others to freedom. Hamilton's account takes note of the legislation passed by the federal government over the years--both protective of and damaging to the rights of African Americans. Her final reference, however, is optimistic, if somewhat oversimplified. She writes that after the Civil War, African Americans ``were able to find the best in life,'' including seeking education, finding jobs, owning land and living together as families. She concludes: ``They did all of these things almost as soon as the war was over. For 125 years they have continued to do so.'' Throughout the volume, the Dillons' dramatic, full-page, black-and-white art offers stunning portraits of the individuals profiled, poignantly conveying their anguish, determination and hope. A Children's BOMC selection. Ages 9-14. (Feb.) . (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
In a companion volume to 'The People Could Fly' (Knopf), Hamilton and the Dillons combine their considerable talents once again to convey the true stories of African Americans whose lives chronicle the history of slavery in the United States. From the 1600s to the 1800s, Hamilton presents the many facets of the experience of slavery: capture and sale, cruelty and mutilation, rebels and runaways. The stories bring to life the pain of slavery and the courage it took both to survive and run away, which is personified in the strength and dignity of the illustrations. From HORN BOOK 1993, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Taking as her theme the ``joyous anthem of freedom,'' beginning with ``No more auction block for me,'' Hamilton samples documented African-American lives from 1619 through the Civil War. Grouping 34 accounts under three headings--``Slavery in America,'' ``Running-Aways,'' ``Exodus to Freedom''--she offers telling vignettes in roughly chronological order, deftly sketching indomitable people valiantly endeavoring to escape. Restricting herself to almost unembellished historical record, Hamilton presents what is known with a cool austerity that makes her subtext even more forceful: though the injustices are representative, these lives are exceptional in having left traces, however meager. The anecdotal fragments are masterfully chosen to illustrate the cruel commonplace, as well as to rehearse pivotal events (Dred Scott) and examine extremes (caught by a posse, Margaret Garner killed her beloved daughter in order to keep her from slavery). As always, Hamilton's prose is concise, lucid, and fresh (Henry Brown's owner ``thought Henry to be happily humble, slow to think and act, inferior in all ways. But Henry was watchful and quick-witted, ever hopeful...''). Along with a splendid jacket of runaways emerging into a dawn of hope, the Dillons provide powerful b&w illustrations of heroic figures of monumental simplicity, handsomely set in dramatically spare compositions. A compelling book, outstanding in every way. Bibliography; index. (Nonfiction. 9+) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
/*STARRED REVIEW*/ Gr. 5-9. Hamilton's account for middle readers is one of the best of this season's many fine books on African American slavery and resistance. Combining general history with personal slave narratives and biography, she tells of the famous, such as Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Anthony Burns, and Harriet Tubman, and the obscure--slaves and "running-aways," rebels and conductors. Designed as a companion to Hamilton's acclaimed The People Could Fly: American Black Folktales (1985), the book has the same style of illustration by the Dillons. One black-and-white picture of a mother and child on the auction block individualizes all the suffering of family separation. Sometimes the prose has a spare lyricism, like a story told over and over ("Heard tell that on the other side, a slave is no longer such. They say that on the other side of the wide water, a slave is a free man"). Often the telling is more direct, allowing the facts to speak for themselves: the sheer numbers (30 percent of the captives did not survive the middle passage across the ocean from Africa to America), the dramatic escapes (like that of Henry Brown, who had himself crated in a box and shipped to freedom), or the stark despair (like the case of Margaret Garner, who killed her child rather than have her captured back into slavery). Hamilton is neither sensational nor sentimental, even as she celebrates the many acts of shining courage. The accounts of rebellion, most of them put down with ruthless barbarity, are grim. In contrast, the stories of the secret codes, networks, and conductors on the Underground Railroad are thrilling and heroic. This makes us all want to know more, much more, about those many thousand gone. (Reviewed Dec. 1, 1992)0394828739Hazel Rochman
