Crossing Bok Chitto: A Choctaw Tale of Friendship and Freedom - Hardcover

Tingle, Tim

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0938317776 ISBN 13: 9780938317777

Publisher: Cinco Puntos Press, 2006

Synopsis

There is a river called Bok Chitto that cuts through Mississippi. In the days before the War Between the States, in the days before the Trail of Tears, Bok Chitto was a boundary. On one side of the river lived the Choctaws. On the other side lived the plantation owners and their slaves. If a slave escaped and made his way across Bok Chitto, the slave was free.

Thus begins Crossing Bok Chitto, told by award-winning Choctaw storyteller Tim Tingle and brought to life with the rich illustrations of Jeanne Rorex Bridges.

Martha Tom, a young Choctaw girl, knows better than to cross Bok Chitto, but one day—in search of blackberries—she disobeys her mother and finds herself on the other side. A tall slave discovers Martha Tom. A friendship begins between Martha Tom and the slave’s family, most particularly his young son, Little Mo. Soon afterwards, Little Mo’s mother finds out that she is going to be sold. The situation seems hopeless, except that Martha Tom teaches Little Mo’s family how to walk on water to their freedom.

Choctaw storyteller Tim Tingle blends songs, cedar flute, and drum with tribal lore to bring the lore of the Choctaw Nation to life in lively historical, personal, and traditional stories. His collection of stories Walking the Choctaw Road was selected as the Oklahoma Book of the Year.

Artist Jeanne Rorex Bridges traces her heritage back to her Cherokee ancestors. Crossing Bok Chitto is her first fully illustrated book.

About this title

About the Authors

Choctaw storyteller Tim Tingle makes his living telling stories and teaching folklore at schools, universities and festivals nationally. The Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers and Storytellers selected Tim as "Contemporary Storyteller of the Year" for 2001. Tim Tingle lives in Canyon Lake, Texas, near San Antonio. Artist Jeanne Rorex Bridges traces her heritage back to her Cherokee ancestors. Born in Oklahoma, her work is nationally known and has won many awards in Native American art shows, including the 2005 Best of Show at the Five Civilized Tribes Museum. Crossing Bok Chitto is her first fully illustrated book.

Not to be outdone by Tim Tingle, artist JEANNE ROREX BRIDGES does a full circuit of Native America art shows throughout the year, in addition to showing her art and illustrations at her home studio in rural eastern Oklahoma, part of the farm and ranch land where she was raised―she bakes blackberry and raspberry cobbler for these home visits with berries she’s collected herself! Jeanne is an award-winning artist of Cherokee ancestry. Her work has become nationally known, winning many awards in Native American art shows. For several years, she has incorporated paintings depicting the shared history of Southeastern Indians and African Americans with her Native American work. The story of Crossing Bok Chitto was a perfect fit for her first book illustration.

Reviews

Grade 2-6–Dramatic, quiet, and warming, this is a story of friendship across cultures in 1800s Mississippi. While searching for blackberries, Martha Tom, a young Choctaw, breaks her village's rules against crossing the Bok Chitto. She meets and becomes friends with the slaves on the plantation on the other side of the river, and later helps a family escape across it to freedom when they hear that the mother is to be sold. Tingle is a performing storyteller, and his text has the rhythm and grace of that oral tradition. It will be easily and effectively read aloud. The paintings are dark and solemn, and the artist has done a wonderful job of depicting all of the characters as individuals, with many of them looking out of the page right at readers. The layout is well designed for groups as the images are large and easily seen from a distance. There is a note on modern Choctaw culture, and one on the development of this particular work. This is a lovely story, beautifully illustrated, though the ending requires a somewhat large leap of the imagination.–Cris Riedel, Ellis B. Hyde Elementary School, Dansville, NY
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*Starred Review* Gr. 2-4. In a picture book that highlights rarely discussed intersections between Native Americans in the South and African Americans in bondage, a noted Choctaw storyteller and Cherokee artist join forces with stirring results. Set "in the days before the War Between the States, in the days before the Trail of Tears," and told in the lulling rhythms of oral history, the tale opens with a Mississippi Choctaw girl who strays across the Bok Chitto River into the world of Southern plantations, where she befriends a slave boy and his family. When trouble comes, the desperate runaways flee to freedom, helped by their own fierce desire (which renders them invisible to their pursuers) and by the Choctaws' secret route across the river. In her first paintings for a picture book, Bridges conveys the humanity and resilience of both peoples in forceful acrylics, frequently centering on dignified figures standing erect before moody landscapes. Sophisticated endnotes about Choctaw history and storytelling traditions don't clarify whether Tingle's tale is original or retold, but this oversight won't affect the story's powerful impact on young readers, especially when presented alongside existing slave-escape fantasies such as Virginia Hamiltons's The People Could Fly (2004) and Julius Lester's The Old African (2005). Jennifer Mattson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Cinco Puntos Press
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0938317776
• ISBN 13: 9780938317777
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Bridges Jeanne Rorex
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 40