Read more
Zusatztext Located in what is now the Treme neighborhood! Congo Square was the one place where the slaves and free blacks of New Orleans were allowed to gather on Sundays! a legally mandated day of rest. There they could reconnect with the dance and music of their West and Central African heritages and feel! at least for a few hours! that they were in "a world apart!" where "freedom's heart" prevailed. Weatherford hits a few flat notes with her rhyming ("Slaves had off one afternoon!/ when the law allowed them to commune")! but she succeeds in evoking a world where prospect of Sunday becomes a way to withstand relentless toil and oppression: "Wednesday! there were beds to make/ silver to shine! and bread to bake./ The dreaded lash! too much to bear./ Four more days to Congo Square." Christie! who worked with Weatherford to illuminate another historic neighborhood in Sugar Hill (2014)! takes readers on a visual journey! moving from searing naïf scenes of plantation life to exuberantly expressionistic and abstract images filled with joyous! soaring curvilinear figures. An introduction and afterword provide further historic detail. Informationen zum Autor Carole Boston Weatherford (Author) Carole Boston Weatherford has written many award-winning books for children, including Coretta Scott King winner RESPECT: Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul ; Newbery Honor winner BOX: Henry Box Brown Mails Himself to Freedom ; Caldecott Honor winners Freedom in Congo Square ; Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer ; and Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom , as well as Golden Kite Award winners Dear Mr. Rosenwald ; Schomburg: The Man Who Built a Library; and The Roots of Rap . She is currently a professor of English at Fayetteville State University in North Carolina where she created a hip-hop course. Find out more about her at cbweatherford.com. R. Gregory Christie (Illustrator) R. Gregory Christie is a three-time recipient of a Coretta Scott King Award Honor for illustration (Brothers in Hope: The Story of the Lost Boys of Sudan; Only Passing Through: The Story of Sojourner Truth; The Palm of My Heart: Poetry by African American Children), a two-time winner of the New York Times' 1 Best Illustrated Children's Books of the Year (in 2 for Only Passing Through and in 22 for Stars in the Darkness), a honor winner of the Theodor Seuss Geisel Award for illustration (Jazz Baby), and a recipient of the NAACP's Image Award. He operates GAS-ART GIFTS, a children's bookstore with autographed copies in Decatur, Georgia. You can find more about Greg online at gas-art.com. Klappentext Six days a week, slaves labor from sunup to sundown and beyond, but on Sunday afternoons, they gather with free blacks at Congo Square outside New Orleans, free from oppression. Includes foreword about Congo Square by Freddi Williams Evans, glossary, and historical notes. Zusammenfassung Winner of a Caldecott Honor and a Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2016 A School Library Journal Best Book of 2016: Nonfiction Starred reviews from School Library Journal , Booklist , Kirkus Reviews , and The Horn Book Magazine A Junior Library Guild Selection This poetic, nonfiction story about a little-known piece of African American history captures a human's capacity to find hope and joy in difficult circumstances and demonstrates how New Orleans' Congo Square was truly freedom's heart. Mondays, there were hogs to slop, mules to train, and logs to chop. Slavery was no ways fair. Six more days to Congo Square. As slaves relentlessly toiled in an unjust system in 19th century Louisiana, they all counted down the days until S...