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Library | Audience | Home Location | Material Type | Shelf Number | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Searching... Central | Kid/Juvenile | Open Stacks Fiction | Open Stacks Kids Book | MCKIS | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
In 1886 in Alabama, an eleven-year-old African American girl and her family befriend and give refuge to a runaway Apache boy.
Author Notes
Patricia C. McKissack was born in Smyrna, Tennessee on August 9, 1944. She received a bachelor's degree in English from Tennessee State University in 1964 and a master's degree in early childhood literature and media programming from Webster University in 1975. After college, she worked as a junior high school English teacher and a children's book editor at Concordia Publishing.
Since the 1980's, she and her husband Frederick L. McKissack have written over 100 books together. Most of their titles are biographies with a strong focus on African-American themes for young readers. Their early 1990s biography series, Great African Americans included volumes on Frederick Douglass, Marian Anderson, and Paul Robeson. Their other works included Black Hands, White Sails: The Story of African-American Whalers and Days of Jubilee: The End of Slavery in the United States. Over their 30 years of writing together, the couple won many awards including the C.S. Lewis Silver Medal, a Newbery Honor, nine Coretta Scott King Author and Honor awards, the Jane Addams Peace Award, and the NAACP Image Award for Sojourner Truth: Ain't I a Woman?. In 1998, they received the Coretta Scott King-Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement.
She also writes fiction on her own. Her book included Flossie and the Fox, Stitchin' and Pullin': A Gee's Bend Quilt, A Friendship for Today, and Let's Clap, Jump, Sing and Shout; Dance, Spin and Turn It Out! She won the Newberry Honor Book Award and the King Author Award for The Dark Thirty: Southern Tales of the Supernatural in 1993 and the Caldecott Medal for Mirandy and Brother Wind. She dead of cardio-respiratory arrest on April 7, 2017 at the age of 72.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 5-8It's 1888 in Alabama, and Sarah Crossman, the 12-year-old daughter of a Seminole woman and a freed slave, finds herself shielding an Apache boy who has escaped federal troops during the transport of Geronimo's followers to Mount Vernon. Her mother immediately sides with her and proceeds to nurse the unconscious Sky, but her father remains opposed. Mr. Crossman has already invited attention because he owns land coveted by others, refuses to be a sharecropper, and assists other blacks in passing nearly impossible voter registration tests. He relents when George Wratten, army scout and interpreter for the Apaches, gives an unofficial consent for the boy to remain until he is well enough to travel. As Sky begins to recover, his fierce, independent demeanor lessens as he warms to the girl's parents, but Sarah doesn't like sharing their attention with someone who is so aloof from her. Other challenges arise when boll weevils destroy the cotton crop, the sheriff calls in the note of debt on the farm, and a hooded white supremacist group arrives on the scene. Based on Wratten's papers and other historical sources, as well as the oral tradition of McKissack's family, the story evolves exquisitely. Attention is even given to the debate about what is most important for the empowerment of an oppressed people: political rights or economic progress. Grabbing readers with wonderful characters, an engaging plot, and vital themes, McKissack weaves a compelling story of cultural clash, tragedy, accommodation, and ultimate triumph.Cindy Darling Codell, Clark Middle School, Winchester, KY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
In this intriguing historical novel, which was inspired by the author's research into her own ancestry, an African American family in Alabama takes in an Apache runaway teenager in the late 1800s. The story centers on 12-year-old Sarah Jane Crossman, her father (a former slave turned farmer) and her part-Seminole mother. Although slavery has ended, old attitudes die hard in the South, and the three struggle daily to protect their land from prejudiced and greedy Sheriff Johnson (who relentlessly pesters them with unfair share-cropping propositions). One day they find a 15-year-old Apache named Sky in their barn, sick with a fever. They nurse him back to health and convince the authorities to release him into their care. McKissack's (Sojourner Truth: Ain't I a Woman?) multidimensional storytelling chronicles the complex relationship between Sky, the Crossmans, the African American community and the white community, resulting in an exciting, tension-packed page-turner. The novel's climax scene, in which Apaches, white Army soldiers, and African American neighbors join together to defend the Crossmans' property, seems a bit Utopian for the era, but readers will cheer for Sky as he leads the defense of "his family's land" against a white supremacist group. McKissack's skillful presentation of the obstacles confronting minorities after the Civil War makes this not only a captivating tale, but a comprehensive introduction to a pivotal period in U.S. history. Ages 8-12. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
(Intermediate) Michael Dorris's adult novels Yellow Raft in Blue Water and Cloud Chamber chronicle the deceptions and betrayals that nearly destroy a family, generation after generation. Yellow Raft in Blue Water moves from the present generation of fifteen-year-old Rayona back through two generations of women on her maternal side, while Cloud Chamber opens in nineteenth-century Ireland and moves forward through five generations of Rayona's paternal family. Whereas these two books convey how suffocating and harmful relationships can be, The Window throws itself open to the strengths of familial bonds. From the moment eleven-year-old Rayona sits by the window waiting for the return of her frequently delinquent mother, this novel pulsates forward with an energy and wit that never falters. In lively contrast to Dorris's more somber historical novels for children, the seemingly cocky but vulnerable and emotionally needy Rayona narrates this short novel with a breezy, spunky voice. When her Indian mother does not return from her latest binge to declare their usual "National Holiday" (on which she and Rayona can eat breakfast for supper and practice being best friends), Rayona's philandering black father informs her that her mother has checked into a rehab center, but that he is unable to care for Rayona. Her foster placement with the relentlessly cheerful Potters (Rayona is amazed to discover that "there are actual people like this who aren't on a weekly sitcom") proves short-lived and disastrous; placement with the stolid Mrs. Jackson turns to unexpected fun for them both but is likewise cut short. Rayona senses that her father, in talking with her about his family (with whom she will live next) is "leaving something out, some detail, some secret within a secret, but I am so anxious to find out what happened next, to get to the 'me' part, that I let it go by." The Window is all the "me part," keeping the exuberant narrator squarely in the middle as she finds her place in the secrets of her family. Rayona soon learns that her grandmother (her father's mother) is white-a fact he tells Rayona when he is taking her to meet her grandmother for the first time. Rayona resolves not to miss another word for the rest of her life. Sitting in the window seat of the airplane, she understands that she will never again "be able to look out a small window and see [her] whole world from it." With the introduction of Rayona's great-grandmother, the ancient and proper Mamaw, her sensible and wise Aunt Edna, and her grandmother Marcella (a "vanilla Hostess cupcake" of a woman), Dorris's novel becomes yet more unguarded as these three women embrace their young relative with unconditional love. No scene feels more genuinely celebratory than when her aunt and grandmother travel west with Rayona to return her home. Having installed a device atop their car to provide cool air-a contrivance that re-quires the windows to be rolled up-the three must shout to be heard, causing a cacophony of "beg your pardons." When Grand-mother opens the window, thinking to be chastised but instead winning the approval of everyone as the cooler sails away, all three break into hilarity and song. Without glos-sing over the hurt and pain of parental abandonment, this novel of open win-dows is a joy, a "national holiday" to which we can return any day of the week. s.p.b. Picture Books Marc Brown Arthur's Computer Disaster; illus. by the author (Preschool, Younger) Arthur knows he's not supposed to be using his mother's computer, but the lure of Deep, Dark Sea, "the greatest game in the universe," is irresistible. Predictably, the computer breaks; luckily, it's easy to fix; reassuringly, Mom is not mad, just disappointed. She decrees that there will be no computer gaming for a week-at least for Arthur: "'I'll be right up,' called Mom. 'As soon as I blast these skeletons from the treasure chest.'" "Adapted by Marc Brown from a teleplay by Joe Fallon," this story of mild disaster followed by mild reproof will be a pleasant diversion for fans of the popular TV personality. r.s. Eve Bunting Ducky; illus. by David Wisniewski (Preschool) David Wisniewski's Caldecott-winning paper-cutting talents get a comedic workout here, illustrating Bunting's slightly sly text about a plastic duck who, along with thousands of fellow bathtub toys, is washed overboard when a storm hits the freighter ferrying them across the ocean (Bunting supplies a note about the factual event that inspired the story). The duck tells the story ("Our ship has disappeared. The sea is big, big, big. Oh, I am scared!"), including an unfortunate encounter with a shark ("It shakes its head and spits us out. I expect we are not too tasty, though we are guaranteed non-toxic") and the basic existential dilemma of a bathtub toy out of its element: "I wish we could swim and get away. But all we can do is float." The ocean's currents eventually bring the duck to shore alongside many of his compatriots, and he finally achieves his destiny, floating in the security of a bubblebath. This is an out-of-the way excursion for both author and illustrator, and if Wisniewski's pictures are sometimes too weighty for Bunting's buoyant text, they are certainly splashy enough. r.s. H Peter Collington A Small Miracle (Younger) The creator of On Christmas Eve (reviewed 11/90) revisits that significant night in another masterfully executed wordless picture book. The artist's trademark sequential frames make the experience of turning the pages like watching a movie; this time it's a gripping, matter-of-factly magical story of charity and selflessness rewarded. In the midst of a bustling, prosperous contemporary village, a desperate old woman loses every-thing when she sells her sole prized possession-her accordion-and then is robbed. On her way home, she encounters the same thief attempting (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
Gr. 4^-7. She had seen the young Apache escape from the train, but 11-year-old Sarah Crossman is surprised when he appears in the family barn. She and her parents nurse the frightened, feverish "Sky" back to health, come to understand and care for him, and realize they should report him to authorities. The African American Crossmans have preconceptions about Indians, but they also endure severe prejudice in 1888 Alabama. Threatened by white supremacists, they valiantly struggle to keep their farm and protect Sky. The generally fast-paced story flags occasionally when information-heavy dialogue intrudes. Characters are either very good or really awful, but the Crossmans are a wonderfully warm, courageous family. The happy ending ties things up too neatly, but this story is fine for the undemanding reader who wants an old-fashioned, feel-good saga. --Linda Perkins
