Now Let Me Fly: The Story of a Slave Family (Aladdin Picture Books)
In an author's note, Johnson ( Your Dad Was Just Like You ) writes that this "is not a pleasant story, nor does it have a happy ending. Yet it is a story that must be told." On all points, she is absolutely correct. Her fictionalized account of an all-too-real situation opens in 1815, when an African girl, Minna, is kidnapped and taken aboard a foul-smelling ship bound for North America. During the arduous three-month trip, she makes friends with a boy named Amadi. Sold to "a tall white man with the cold eyes of a snake," the two are put to work in the cotton fields, and eventually marry and have four children. In her powerful, heartbreaking first-person narrative, Minna tells how Amadi is suddenly sold to another master (". . . before I could even say good-bye. I was never to hear another word from him again"). The next year, her oldest son is also sold, after which Minna allows two other children to "steal away" to freedom. As the tale closes, Minna and her youngest daughter still live in "this prison of slavery" on the cotton plantation; an epilogue speculates on the fates of the fictional characters and explains that they, their descendants and the majority of their real-life counterparts continued this "brutal existence" until the Civil War ended 20 years later. Johnson's stately, slightly impressionistic illustrations underscore the anguish and sadness of her story--and of the entire slavery experience. Ages 5-10.Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.