The Leaving (Ccb Picture Book) [Hardcover]

Bettye Stroud (Author), Cedric Lucas (Illustrator)

Book Description

Age Level: 6 and up | Grade Level: 1 and up | Series: Ccb Picture Book

In the days following the end of slavery, a little girl helps her family escape from a cruel plantation owner.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

K-Gr 4-A nine-year-old girl, with her uncle's help, leads her debt-enslaved family to a place safe from the landowner who will not free them. It is five years after Emancipation, but the family owes more money to the company store than they will ever be able to work off. Little Bit follows Uncle James by boxcar to a place where horses have been hidden and they return at night, trick the landowner's dogs, and carry the others away to a neighboring farm. Readers have to set their own context, with Little Bit's help, as no author's note informs them of Reconstruction and the aftermath of Abolition. The modern-looking setting and dress feature no obvious period details to lend authenticity or help youngsters to visualize the story. Created with pastel on pumice board, the illustrations are murky so that depictions of the action are difficult to see both up close and at storyhour. A more exciting tale of escape for this age group is Doreen Rappaport's Freedom River (Hyperion, 2000), set before Emancipation, with compelling illustrations and an author's note.-Susan Hepler, Burgundy Farm Country Day School, Alexandria, VA

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Ages 5-8. It's five years after emancipation, and a young girl waits in bed, listening to her uncle prepare to flee the cruel master to whom her family remains enslaved by debt. Disguised as a boy, she follows him into the night in a terrifying flight: she rides the rails and leaps from a train; she returns to the plantation, quiets the dogs, collects her family; and with the master in pursuit, she leads her parents to waiting horses and then to the safety of a neighbor's home. Although suspenseful and episodic, the story is text-heavy, and its emphasis on the mechanics of the escape may distance kids from the characters. But Lucas' pastel illustrations are exceptional. Dusky colors and blurred shapes portray the fear, risk, and motion in the story's night scenes and will help draw children back into the dramatic history. Gillian Engberg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 6 and up
  
• Hardcover: 32 pages
• Publisher: Marshall Cavendish Children's Books; 1St Edition edition (March 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 076145067X
• ISBN-13: 978-0761450672
• Product Dimensions: 11.2 x 8.6 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,836,633 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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