Now Let Me Fly: The Story of a Slave Family

In an author's note, Johnson ( Your Dad Was Just Like You ) writes that this ``is not a pleasant story, nor does it have a happy ending. Yet it is a story that must be told.'' On all points, she is absolutely correct. Her fictionalized account of an all-too-real situation opens in 1815, when an African girl, Minna, is kidnapped and taken aboard a foul-smelling ship bound for North America. During the arduous three-month trip, she makes friends with a boy named Amadi. Sold to ``a tall white man with the cold eyes of a snake,'' the two are put to work in the cotton fields, and eventually marry and have four children. In her powerful, heartbreaking first-person narrative, Minna tells how Amadi is suddenly sold to another master (``. . . before I could even say good-bye. I was never to hear another word from him again''). The next year, her oldest son is also sold, after which Minna allows two other children to ``steal away'' to freedom. As the tale closes, Minna and her youngest daughter still live in ``this prison of slavery'' on the cotton plantation; an epilogue speculates on the fates of the fictional characters and explains that they, their descendants and the majority of their real-life counterparts continued this ``brutal existence'' until the Civil War ended 20 years later. Johnson's stately, slightly impressionistic illustrations underscore the anguish and sadness of her story--and of the entire slavery experience. Ages 5-10. (Oct.)