Night Boat to Freedom

by Margot Theis Raven, E. B. Lewis (Illustrator)

Overview

What scares the head is best done with the heart.

When Granny Judith asks twelve-year-old Christmas John to row Molly across the river from Kentucky to the Free State of Ohio, he's terrified. But Granny Judith reassures him. So Christmas John begins the first of many dangerous journeys. And each passing day brings hope that Granny and John can find their own freedom, just across the river.

Night Boat to Freedom is a 2007 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312550189
Publisher:	Square Fish
Publication date:	12/23/2008
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	40
Sales rank:	1,079,951
Product dimensions:	9.70(w) x 10.50(h) x 0.40(d)
Lexile:	780L (what's this?)
Age Range:	6 - 9 Years

About the Author

Margot Raven and E. B. Lewis collaborated on Circle Unbroken (available in paperback from Square Fish), a Booklist Top 10 Black History Book for Youth. The author lives in Charleston, South Carolina; the artist, a Caldecott Honor Medalist, lives in Folsom, New Jersey.

Editorial Reviews

A powerful new picture book. Watercolor paintings . . . match the mood and theme.” —The Chicago Sun-Times

“Words and pictures work perfectly together, making sound from silence and light from darkness.” —Booklist, Starred Review

“Lewis's watercolors beautifully capture the loving relationship between Granny Judith and Christmas John. . . . Handsome and affecting.” —Kirkus Reviews

“A rich story for adults and children to share.” —School Library Journal

“The runaways' success is joyfully triumphant, but perhaps the most moving aspect of the work is Lewis's watercolor paintings, which skillfully manipulate light and shadow to create two parallel worlds.” —The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

From the Publisher

Gr 2-6-Christmas John, 12, lives in a pine-board cabin with Granny Judith, who was enslaved when strangers lured her to their ship with a piece of red flannel. Now on a plantation in Kentucky, Granny Judith and Christmas John help others escape across the river to the free state of Ohio by taking advantage of John's youth-he's young enough to avoid notice, and old enough to row a boat across and back. Granny Judith stitches a quilt, incorporating the colors the escapees wear. "What color is freedom tonight?" As the quilt approaches completion and the risks grow, the time comes for their own escape. Based on several different narratives from the Federal Writers' Project Slave Narrative Collection, Raven's moving story is full of particulars that lend it authenticity. Lewis's realistic watercolors use texture and shadow to an impressionistic effect, communicating the utter darkness in which Christmas John works, and the emotion contained in a single color. An author's note shows how Raven pieced together her story like Granny Judith's quilt, lending a context that makes this a rich story for adults and children to share.-Nina Lindsay, Oakland Public Library, CA Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

School Library Journal

Drawing from hundreds of histories recorded in the Federal Writers' Project's Slave Narrative Collection, Raven quilts a composite tale set on the border between Kentucky-a slave state-and free Ohio. Granny Judith, a slave who dyes thread and weaves cloth, asks 12-year-old Christmas John, who she's raised, to do a brave thing: row a slave girl across the Ohio River to freedom. The boy repeats this act (historically, over four years' time) until it's too dangerous to continue. Raven both highlights the historical import of fabric arts in slave life and incorporates them metaphorically. Granny Judith, giving Christmas John a handmade shirt dyed "turkey red," his "freedom color," bids him to save himself. He returns from the river and collects the old woman, declaring, "Freedom's got no color for me without you." Multiple-award-winner Lewis's watercolors beautifully capture the loving relationship between Granny Judith and Christmas John, who he portrays as a strong adolescent grown bigger than his caregiver. He effectively paints the many moonless nightscapes, mist shrouding the fleeing figures. Handsome and affecting. (author's note) (Picture book. 6-9)

Kirkus Reviews