By Carole Boston Weatherford
Harriet Tubman's escape from slavery, told as the conversation she keeps with God on the long walk north, alone.
One night Harriet Tubman decides she would rather risk death than stay enslaved another day, and she sets off north through the woods alone. Weatherford tells the whole escape as the conversation Harriet keeps up with God the whole way: her fear, her exhaustion, her certainty that she's being led. She reaches the free North. Then she turns around and goes back, over and over, to bring others out too, and that is how she came to be called Moses.
I'd reach for this once a child is old enough to take in what slavery actually was and what escaping it cost. It's a long, serious picture book, and it doesn't move fast; it stays inside one woman's fear and her nerve. What makes it stay with you is that Harriet doesn't only free herself. She goes back for others knowing exactly what capture would mean. The faith runs right through it, in Harriet's own words, so it helps to know that going in, especially for a classroom.