I remember being a young kid learning about slavery and thinking something along the lines of, "Why would anyone accept being a slave?" At the time I didn't understand a lot of things. I didn't understand the drive to stay alive, even if it means living under unbearable conditions. I didn't understand what it means to be born into a culture that denies your humanity. If I had had the opportunity to read this book back then, I think it would've helped me understand the psychological shackles of slavery, not just the literal ones.

Grace is nine years old and has always lived with her mother in slave quarters on a tobacco plantation. But now Grace is being forced to live and work in the Big House serving the white Master and Missus. It's just on the other side of the hill from her family, but it means Grace won't see her mother. And it means Grace will be scrutinized by the hateful Missus. Through poetry, the reader feels Grace's fear, her intense love for her mother, and also her desire to speak her mind even though it's forbidden. When Grace discovers the Master and Missus intend to sell her mother and brothers at a slave auction, she finds the courage to try to save her family.

This story is based on new research about the Great Dismal Swamp, a seemingly uninhabitable area in Virginia and North Carolina that was a refuge for people escaping slavery. You can read more about it here: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/deep-swamps-archaeologists-fugitive-slaves...

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Representation: Black main character
Trigger warnings: Slavery, human trafficking, abuse

7/10, oh wow I haven't read a poetry book in a while but the last one I read called Grace Notes was good and I enjoyed this one as well and I thought that the writing style of this would let me down but somehow the author managed to pull it off which I was pleasantly surprised at, where do I begin. It starts off with the main character Grace about to be sent off into a building called the Big House where she will work for her master as a slave and she does that at first however she thinks about what it means to be free. These thoughts continue to be there as her master oppresses her until she had had enough of that so she devises a plan to escape and that plan was to go south through the swamps until no one can oppress her anymore. Soon enough Grace and some other characters execute the plan and go southwards away from the Big House and her master and towards the swamps which takes up the middle part of the book and I found it a bit sluggish and tedious since it's a major part but once I was done with it I reached the end where Grace finally exits the swamps, meets some new characters and achieves her goal which wraps up the book on a high note. The only thing that bugged me was that this is not #ownvoices since a white author wrote a book with a Black character and I found a book similar to this called Freewater you can try which is #ownvoices. ( )

Retelling: Young Grace is troubled by "rightiness thoughts." She was born on the plantation of a wealthy land-owner named Master Allen and his brutal wife. The book opens with Grace expressing her fear of moving away from her mother, two brothers, and uncle Jim who looks out for their family, and into the "Big House" with the masters. She is troubled by the unfairness of the world she was born into, and she is troubled that saying so might imperil her family. The more cruel her world becomes, the more she has to fight to keep her thoughts to herself until finally, a final act of unnecessary cruelty makes the dangerous path of running away--of battling natural dangers in a rugged swampland with little food, shelter, or protection--less terrifying than the dangers of slavery.

Thoughts and feelings: As someone who always has an opinion, I'm sure it would be nearly impossible for me to suppress the outrage that Grace felt. I was warmed by the love in her family, and the ingenuity of the brave black men and women around her who used the dangers of the swamp as protection against the dangers of society. The language was poetic and the author used a dialect but I think it would be accessible to young readers. Grace's account reads smoothly and the plot is engaging. The author includes a note at the back of the book stating which historical discoveries her novel in verse was based on.

CW: Depicts life as slaves

3,5 Stars

Well this middle-school verse novel was a wonderful testament to the the strength of people escaping the injustices and horrors of slavery.

Nine year old Grace is a beautifully drawn character and was the perfect narrator for this story. This could be used in classes as a launching point for studies on the abhorrent practice of slavery and then ownvoice accounts could be incorporated in this study to ensure authenticity, and that the right perspectives are heard on this topic. ( )

This is a middle grade fiction in the form of novel-in-verse. It's about how a family of American slaves in the early 1800s escaped into a nearby swamp and joined the community of other former slaves there to live a life of freedom. After a google search I found out these people are called "maroons," and the swamp is located in Virginia and North Carolina and called The Great Dismal Swamp. Maroons had lived in the swamp until soldiers rode into the swamp after the Civil War and announced their emancipation. Fascinating information!

The story is narrated from the viewpoint of a 9-year-old girl. The author had her repeatedly question the slavery system, presumably reasonable given her young age and innocence. But I still doubt a person born and raised in the slavery system would have the inclination to ask questions like " It's not fair. Why can't she polish her own silver? Why can't she bake her own muffins? Why do grown folks need help getting dressed?" or "Don't you care that Anna gets sent to the smokehouse cause grown people can't find they own bedpan or even dress emselves?" These are questions that would more likely be raised by children with a modern mind, which the book's readers are. So at times I feel like the girl is more like someone who had 21 century values but time traveled back to the 1800s to critique the institution of slavery and express her beliefs about what freedom should be. ( " Freedom's livin with folds who love you n havin the space ot love yourself. Freedom's not bein afraid to say your own thoughts, to follow your own heart, jus like the good Lord intended.") There's even a section in her monologue about how every character in the book matters. So it's paragraph after paragraph of " ___ matters." " ___matters too." "Everyone's got a way of matterin. The only thing what don't matter is what color the good Lord paints us." So timely that I cracked up. The word choice was likely intentional, given that the book was published in October 2016.

There's also a segment in which the girl discussed with her friend in the maroon colony about how sad it is that " it feels like...I never existed. Always hiding, never leaving a trace of who I am or where I've been.....It's like we don't exist. No one will remember us. No one will even know we were here." Then they buried a button they owned into a hole and became consoled that "anyone ever finds this will know we existed." Indeed, the maroons left very little artifact that allows historians to know about them. But that's a problem for us modern history learners. I have never shed tears over whether people not in my community will remember me, or considered burying artifacts for future people to find. I seriously doubt it was an issue of concern for the maroons themselves LOL

Despite my preference for historical fiction to deliver a more authentic presentation of the time period it covers, I think this is a great book for children to learn about this interesting piece of Black history. ( )