Freedom's School

The Emancipation Proclamation has been signed; Lizzie's parents "went to sleep slaves and woke up free." Now they insist Lizzie and her brother go to the new school built "just for us"--even though it means two less pairs of hands to help out on the family's meager farm. "Real freedom means 'rithmetic and writing," Mama says. But the school, its students, and its young teacher (a Northerner who has skin "just as brown as mine," Lizzie marvels) quickly become flashpoints for people determined to halt progress and justice. This collaboration from the Ransomes (Light in the Darkness) isn't always narratively taut--it pulls its dramatic punches, and the text reaches for an earnest folksiness ("we both knew that halfway to freedom feels like no freedom at all"). But James Ransome's watercolors are, as always, emotionally generous, cinematic in their sensibility, and resplendent with gorgeous color. Gradually, the story deepens its hold, and readers will come away understanding why it takes more than the stroke of a pen to give people the justice and equality they deserve. Ages 6-8. (Jan.)

Gr 2-5--With the passage of the 13th Amendment, announced on the title page in a Boston Globe headline, comes the opportunity for Lizzie and her younger brother, presumably residents of the rural South, to attend school for the first time--a rough wooden structure where Mizz Howard introduces the children to their letters. But getting there means encountering hostile white people, and sometimes school is canceled due to impeding threats. When the building is deliberately set afire, it is the determination of their teacher and other African Americans in the community that allows them to rebuild and rekindle hope for a brighter future. The story is illustrated with Ransome's signature lush, watercolor paintings, all spreads in warm tones of brown, gold, and red contrasted with many shades of green and deep blue. In stark contrast are the endpapers, a white chalk upper- and lowercase alphabet against solid black, symbolic of the struggle between the races. VERDICT A stunning package that adds to the body of literature documenting the African American experience.--Marie Orlando, formerly at Suffolk Cooperative Library System, Bellport, NY