A friendship between an enslaved
black boy and a Choctaw woman results in freedom.
Lil Mo is one in all two youngsters in a
black household enslaved on a Mississippi plantation in 1808. He meets Martha Tom,
a Choctaw woman, when she crosses the Bok Chitto River to choose blackberries. Martha
reveals Lil Mo the key river crossing, a shallow underwater pathway manufactured from
stones the Choctaw laid way back. When the plantation proprietor decides to promote Lil
Mo’s mom, Martha’s household helps Lil Mo’s household escape throughout the river,
the place they’re adopted into the Choctaw nation. Thus Lil Mo inherits an uncle,
an elder by the title of Funi Man, whose humor and knowledge lighten the air of
vigilance maintained to guard Lil Mo’s household. As Lil Mo’s household learns the
language and lifestyle of the Choctaw, all appears properly till an outdated witch lays
a curse that impels Funi Man onto a harmful journey to as soon as and for all save
Lil Mo’s spirit. As he did in his image e book Crossing Bok Chitto (illustrated by Jeanne Rorex Bridges, 2006), Tingle
(Choctaw) captures a not often explored bond that fashioned throughout colonization
between enslaved Africans and Native Individuals, an alliance of survival below
white colonial tyranny. He evokes a 19th-century Southern panorama,
presenting it by means of the lens of Individuals whose views are too not often
shared.
This very important story will deepen
readers’ understanding of the nation’s complicated historical past. (Historic fiction. 10-14)
