A unique and engaging perspective on enslaved families.
– Kirkus Reviews, starred review
A powerful tale of slavery and its two terrible options: stay or run.
– Booklist, starred review
With a text at once simple, rhythmic, and heartbreaking, Ransome conveys for a very young audience the grinding treadmill of slave labor and the impetus to leave loved ones for a chance at freedom.
– BCCB
[A] startling force.
– Publishers Weekly, starred review
[Ransome] succeeds in communicating the myriad and complex emotions of individuals choosing to flee chattel enslavement and the aftermath of those left behind. Without sugarcoating or minimizing the complexity of human emotion, the illustrations communicate what words cannot: the tender love of family, the cruelty of enslavement, the emptiness left after the loss of a loved one, and the ever-present dilemma of self-emancipation for those who lived in bondage.
– Horn Book, starred review
