Bookverdict.com

Gr 3 Up—Previous picture books about Juneteenth (the holiday celebrating the day slaves were freed in Texas—two years after the rest of the country) have focused on contemporary children discovering this quirk of history. Valerie Wesley's Freedom's Gifts (S. & S., 1997) and Carole Boston Weatherford's Juneteenth Jamboree (Lee & Low, 1995) fall into that category. Johnson imagines what it would be like to be a slave one minute and a free person the next. Spare text, structured as free verse, hones in on the smell of honeysuckle and breakfast routines as the ...Log In or Sign Up to Read More

Juneteenth -- commemorating June 19th, 1865, the date slaves in Texas finally learned of their emancipation -- is a day of celebration for many African Americans. In exquisite, lyrical text, Johnson reimagines that historic event from the perspective of one fictional family, on a day that started like any other. Families wake and head to the fields to pick cotton under the blistering sun. But soon, "word spread / fro...Log In or Sign Up to Read More

In exquisite, lyrical text, Johnson reimagines Juneteenth--the date slaves in Texas finally learned of their emancipation--from th...Log In or Sign Up to Read More

Captures the joy, disbelief, and hope of a people who go to bed slaves and wake to find themselves free. Angela Johnson divides the text into lyrical, unrhymed fragments that are well suited to being read aloud: “And nobody knew, / as we / ate a little, / talked a little, / and headed to the fields / as the sun was rising, / that soon, / it would all be d...Log In or Sign Up to Read More