Review by Booklist 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 Fly0 (2004) and Julius Lester's The Old African 0 (2005). --Jennifer Mattson Copyright 2006 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Bridges, a Cherokee artist making her children's book debut, joins Tingle (Walking the Choctaw Road) in a moving and wholly original story about the intersection of cultures. The river Bok Chitto divides the Choctaw nation from the plantations of Mississippi. "If a slave escaped and made his way across Bok Chitto, the slave was free," writes Tingle, "The slave owner could not follow. That was the law." But Bok Chitto holds a secret: a rock pathway that lies just below the surface of the water. "Only the Choctaws knew it was there, for the Choctaws had built it," Tingle explains. When a slave boy and his family are befriended by a Choctaw girl, the pathway becomes part of an ingenious plan that enables the slaves to cross the river to freedom-in plain view of a band of slave hunters during a full moon. Bridges creates mural-like paintings with a rock-solid spirituality and stripped-down graphic sensibility, the ideal match for the down-to-earth cadences and poetic drama of the text. Many of the illustrations serve essentially as portraits, and they're utterly mesmerizing-strong, solid figures gaze squarely out of the frame, beseeching readers to listen, empathize and wonder. Ages 5-up. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 4 Up-A master storyteller sets down 10 tales told in New Mexico. In the title story, a clever wife diverts some thieves who are after her dim-witted husband, thus assuring the couple's prosperity. In a cumulative tale, a little ant escapes being stuck forever in the cold under a large snowflake by enlisting help from tiny cousin flea. The stories are well told, rhythmic, and spellbinding, both in English and in the colloquial Spanish. Hayes is a fine translator, and these stories are a testament to his expert execution of this exacting art. The format indicates that the book is designed more for the storyteller than for the reader. A paragraph of English text alternates with the same paragraph in Spanish. This makes for choppy reading, but is a natural and helpful division if the tale is being memorized. Each story begins with a full-page pencil drawing. Photographic in detail, Castro L.'s art extends the stories a bit. Notes to the stories give history as well as the Arne-Thompson numbers for the tale type. Similar in content to Carmen Diana Dearden's Little Book of Latin American Folktales (Groundwood, 2003), Hayes's work is the better told of the two. It could be used alongside Mary-Joan Gerson's excellent Fiesta Femenina (Barefoot, 2001) for a storytime that points out similarities and differences in Mexican and New Mexican folktales. An excellent purchase for storytelling librarians or for schools with storytelling clubs. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
This bilingual edition of Hayes's classic collection of folktales from New Mexico is a gift to librarians and storytellers. The only downside is that the format of alternating Spanish and English paragraphs in the text is a bit disconcerting. Facing pages, with English on one side and Spanish on the other, would have been better. Source notes on all the tales are included. From HORN BOOK Spring 2004, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
