Freedom's School

November 17, 2014
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.

November 1, 2014
Emancipation means education.A little girl narrates her family's story in the days and months immediately after the end of slavery. Her parents decide that she and her brother must attend school in spite of the dangers they face walking there. The school does not have very much in the way of supplies or heat, but it does have a teacher "with skin as brown as mine," says the girl. Students come and go depending on when they are needed in the field. Then racism strikes, and the school burns down. Still, the community spirit is strong, and the African-American neighbors come together to rebuild. Cline-Ransome does not give a specific locale for the story, thus making it representative of much of the rural South after the Civil War. Telling the story in the voice of a child helps to make the story more immediate and should help young readers appreciate the difficulties involved in building, maintaining and attending school. Ransome's watercolor paintings are richly evocative of the seasons while also creating memorable characters and emotions. The endpapers depicting a blackboard with upper- and lowercase letters written in chalk are a child-friendly touch. Readers don't need to have been recently emancipated to understand this eloquent testament to the overriding importance of school. (Picture book. 4-7)

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April 1, 2015

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

Copyright 2015 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 15, 2014
Grades 1-3 When emancipation comes, Rosa and her younger brother, former African American slaves, walk to their new one-room school, the first they have ever known. Though white boys on the road throw rocks at them, the two children are warmly greeted by their teacher. She helps all of her students, who attend school when they can be spared from farm work, but one time she turns the children away because she fears for their safety. Another time, fire destroys the building. Still, the community pulls together and pitches in to build Freedom's school. Told with economy and restraint, the story expresses the deep desire among the community's African American families for their children to be educated. Ransome's large-scale paintings are fluid watercolors with dramatic use of light and dark and a fine sense of composition. This handsome book makes an interesting follow-up to the writer and illustrator's other education-related picture books, including Words Set Me Free: The Story of Young Frederick Douglass (2012) and Light in the Darkness: A Story about How Slaves Learned in Secret (2013).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)