Going North - Hardcover

Janice N. Harrington; Jerome Lagarrigue

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374326819 ISBN 13: 9780374326814

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004

Synopsis

An African American family becomes a new kind of pioneer

Leaving behind Big Mama, loving relatives, and the familiar red soil and cotton fields of Alabama, Jessie and her family are going north to Nebraska. They are pioneers searching for a better life, one with decent schools and jobs. But traveling through the segregated South is difficult for an African American family in the 1960s. With most public places reserved for "whites only," where will they stop to get gas and food?

Lyrical free verse and evocative paintings capture the rhythm of the road and a young girl's longing as she wonders: Will I like it there? Will I like the North?

About this title

About the Author

Janice N. Harrington is a children's librarian and professional storyteller. Going North is her first children's book. She lives in Champaign, Illinois.

Jerome Lagarrigue received the Coretta Scott King / John Steptoe Award for New Talent for his illustrations for Freedom Summer by Deborah Wiles. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Gr. 2-4, younger for reading aloud. It's 1964 in Alabama, and Jessie's African American family prepares to leave the South for better jobs and schools. Jessie knows that the best opportunities lie further north, but she doesn't want to leave her beloved grandparents and familiar home: "I wish my toes were roots. / I'd grow into a pin oak and never go away." Then moving day arrives, and the family piles into the station wagon for a long drive to Nebraska. In subtle, cadenced poetry, Harrington brings close the stark realities blacks faced in the segregated South ("Can't stop anywhere. / Only the Negro stations, / only the Negro stores") as well as Jessie's growing excitement as she considers what's ahead: "listening to the tires / make a road-drum, a road-beat: / good luck / good luck / good luck." Lagarrigue's paintings beautifully capture the family scenes in the car and the endless, shifting landscape from the window in soft-edged, thickly brushed strokes that heighten the emotions in Jesse's words--the nostalgia, the worry, and the bittersweet hope about a promising new place. Pair this with Jacqueline Woodson's Coming on Home Soon [BKL Ag 04], another quiet, powerful portrait of an African American child's view of family migration. Gillian Engberg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About this edition

• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0374326819
• ISBN 13: 9780374326814
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 40