Bound To Stay Bound

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School Library Journal - 11/01/2012 Gr 3–8—Gorgeously rendered in soft, dark pencils, this wordless book is reminiscent of the naturalistic pencil artistry of Maurice Sendak and Brian Selznick, but unique in its accurate re-creation of a Civil War-era farm in northwestern Virginia. On the dedication page, readers see a star quilt on a split rail fence, symbolizing the North Star. Confederate soldiers arrive on horseback and a farmer's daughter's lingering gaze betrays her intuition of their visit. She goes about her duties of feeding the animals and gathering harvested vegetables. In the recently harvested cornstalks propped up in the corner of the barn, she hears a rustling and sees an eye. Superb visual storytelling shows her hands time and time again offering a piece of corn bread, apple pie, a leg of chicken, each time on a small checkered kerchief, to the young, hidden runaway. The soldiers return with a poster: "Wanted! Escaped! Reward!" These words call out in the otherwise wordless book, and readers feel their power. Parallels between the fugitive and the farmer's daughter establish themselves visually when the latter gazes from behind a door, terrified at this threat. An author's note details the Civil War stories Cole heard as a young boy and underscores his intention of showing not the division, anger, and violence of the Civil War, but "the courage of everyday people who were brave in quiet ways."—Sara Lissa Paulson, American Sign Language and English Lower School PS 347, New York City - Copyright 2012 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission.

Booklist - 12/01/2012 From the title on, silence and secrets create stirring drama in this wordless picture book about a child who helps a runaway slave escape. The full-page charcoal-and-pencil drawings in sepia tones show the girl busy with her chores on her family’s farm. Then she glimpses someone watching her in the barn. She barely sees the runaway; the pictures show just an eye. She never speaks with the hidden figure, but she leaves food, wrapped in cloth, even as terrifying, armed slave hunters on horseback show her family a poster: “Wanted. Escaped. Reward.” Then the fugitive disappears in the night, but the girl finds a doll made from the star-patterned cloth that covered the food she had brought. At the story’s end, the girl lies in bed watching the stars in the night sky. A long afterword adds context to the historical setting, and children will be moved to return to the images many times and fill in their own words. - Copyright 2012 Booklist.

Bulletin for the Center... - 01/01/2013 Inspired by family stories of relatives who lived through the Civil War, Cole presents in wordless format the experience of a young girl who discovers a runaway slave on her family’s property during the war. Rebel soldiers, identifiable by their stars and bars, pass by the farm while the girl goes about her chores. In the storage shed, an eye peeks out from behind a bunch of cornstalks, and although the girl is frightened, she returns at night with food wrapped in a napkin. Offerings of pie, biscuit, cornbread, and a chicken drumstick are delivered to the unseen refugee, and the family obviously professes ignorance when bounty hunters arrive with a handbill demanding the return of a runaway. When the child returns to the shed to make another late-night check on their desperate guest, the runaway has gone, but a cornhusk doll clad in the checkered napkin lies on the floor as a heartfelt thank-you. This is going to be tough to parse at times for youngsters: adult intervention or the closing notes will likely be required to recognize the significance of the opening pages, which feature a quilt draped over the split-rail fence to indicate the house as friendly to runaways; it’s also never really clear how much the girl’s family actually knows. Still, this is an involving format for introducing children to the workings of the Underground Railroad, and the atmospheric pencil drawings, reminiscent of Chris Van Allsburg’s monochromatic work, will draw children into the tenebrous adventure. EB - Copyright 2013 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois.

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