From Slave Ship to Freedom Road - Author Study

Lester, J. (1998). From Slave Ship to Freedom Road.  Puffin Books: New York.

This book is not a story but more an outpouring of emotion and a narrative expression that the author wrote to add words to very powerful images.  Julius Lester gives historical facts and voices to people in the paintings.  The images and the text take you from slave ship to freedom and the many paths that slaves walked along.  It pointedly asks you to think about things and addresses them as "Imagination Exercises" and has different one for both whites and blacks.

Although a picture book, the thoughts expressed are too deep for elementary school and better saved for middle and high school.  Students in high school and middle school are rarely read picture books so this would be a good transition for them into such a deep subject and such emotion coming from the words and images.

The preface of this books asks readers not to be passive readers but to imagine themselves in these images.  This would be a great way to start a reading response to the book itself.  To take one painting from this book and describe yourself as one of the people pictured in the painting.