"Real freedom means 'rithmetic and writing," Lizzie's mother tells her in this inspiring picture book about the importance of education from the husband-and-wife team behind Light in the Darkness.
The headline in the Boston Post left behind on a park bench says "The Thirteenth Amendment Ends Slavery," and Lizzie's mother tells her "we got to work harder than ever before." Lizzie and her younger brother, Paul, make their way to their new school, and Lesa Cline-Ransome smoothly describes the schoolhouse through Lizzie's eyes: "Inside were long benches and tables of rough wood, lined up like rows of cotton." Lizzie likes her teacher, Mizz Howard ("when she spoke, it was in smiles"), and describes the ebb and flow of attendance, depending on whether it's harvest time. The children soldier through insults, and arrive one day only to have Mizz Howard turn them back ("it wasn't safe"); James E. Ransome depicts a white horseman amid the nearby trees. "Why do white folks get so mad over us getting something they already got?" Paul asks. An act of arson burns the school down (that same horseman lurks in the woods), but those "scraps of learning" have whet Lizzie's appetite: "they just made me hungry for more."
Hope prevails, as the community unites to rebuild the school, and Mizz Howard delivers lessons al fresco. Children may require some scaffolding to understand the newness of the experience for Lizzie and Paul, but they will certainly absorb how much this family reveres the chance to learn. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness