No More!: Stories and Songs of Slave Resistance (BANK STREET COLLEGE OF EDUCATION FLORA STIEGLITZ STRAUS AWARD (AWARDS)) - Hardcover

Rappaport, Doreen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0763609846 ISBN 13: 9780763609849

Publisher: Candlewick, 2001

Synopsis

True vignettes and traditional verse, set against starkly powerful images, tell the story of enslaved Africans in America as it has never been told before.

A man who cannot swim leaps off a slave ship into the dark water. A girl defies the law by secretly learning to read and write. A future abolitionist regains his will to live by fighting off his captor with his bare hands: "I will not let you use me like a brute any longer," Frederick Douglass vows. Drawing from authentic accounts, here is a chronology of resistance in all its forms: comical trickster tales about outwitting "Old Marsa"; secret "hush harbors" where Africans instill Christian worship with their own rituals; and spirituals such as "Go Down Moses," whose coded lyrics signal not just hope for deliverance, but an active call to escape.

Boldly illustrated with extraordinary oil paintings by award-winning artist Shane W. Evans, and meticulously researched by Doreen Rappaport, this stunning collection - spanning the period from the early days of slavery to the Emancipation Proclamation - is an invaluable resource for teachers, parents, libraries, students, and people everywhere who care about what it means to be free, what it is to be human.

About this title

Review

Celebrating the deep strength and resilience of African American slaves over centuries of miserable oppression, Doreen Rappaport gathers stories, songs, and poetry in this stunning compilation. The quest for freedom and dignity drove many slaves to push themselves beyond what most humans could bear: enduring brutal beatings, watching their families be torn apart, experiencing humiliation at the hands of their white masters. But through it all, women, men, and children resisted in whatever ways they could. In riveting first-person narrative, Rappaport tells the stories of these courageous souls, from Olaudah Equiano's survival through the Middle Passage to Harriet Tubman's Underground Railroad. Traditional songs are interspersed throughout, including "Gospel Train" and "Go Down, Moses," and artist Shane W. Evans (Osceola: Memories of a Sharecropper's Daughter) captures the hope and despair of his subjects in rich, evocative oil paintings. Doreen Rappaport is the acclaimed author of many children's books, including Martin's Big Words: The Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.. (Ages 7 to 11) --Emilie Coulter

From the Publisher

This stunning collection – spanning the period from the early days of slavery to the Emancipation Proclamation – is an invaluable resource for teachers, parents, libraries, students, and people everywhere who care about what it means to be free, what it is to be human.

Edition details

• Publisher: Candlewick
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0763609846
• ISBN 13: 9780763609849
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 64
• Illustrator: Evans Shane W.