Henry's Freedom Box - Ellen Levine

A True Story from the Underground Railroad
Illustrator: Kadir Nelson
Published: 2007
Read 1/31/09 B&N
Rating: 5
2008 Caldecott Honor Book
Endpapers: Medium brown

What a story! What detailed, heart-tugging illustrations! It begins, "Henry Brown wasn't sure how old he was. Henry was a slave. And slaves weren't allowed to know their birthdays. That sure says a lot. The illustration is of a young, barefoot boy sitting on a barrell and just staring....

Henry is sold away from his family. He works in a tobacco factory for years, meets a young woman named Nancy, they are given permission to wed. They have three kids. But one day, Nancy and the kids are sold and he loses them forever. He decides to try to become a free man. With the help of a white doctor who thought slavery was wrong, he mailed himself in a crate to Philadelphia - and freedom. It worked.

I think as much as we hear about families being torn apart, about the indignity that black slaves went through, that a story like this for kids that tells (and shows) the truth is still very much needed to make a hard-to-understand concept more real.

And oh, the illustrations. Kadir Nelson's illustrations for All God's Critters were really different than those he did for this, but just as amazing and wonderful. I have a new hero! Crosshatched pencil lines are covered with layers of watercolor and oil paints. The back flap says he also illustrated Ellington Was Not a Street (Ntozake Shange) and Just the Two of Us (Will Smith). You'll see both of those reviewed here soon, what do you want to bet?