--• Slavery / Underground Railroad •--

Anderson, M.T. – The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation: The Pox Party (351 pages) Various diaries, letters, and other manuscripts chronicle the experiences of Octavian, a young African American, from birth to age sixteen, as he is brought up as part of a science experiment in the years leading up to and during the Revolutionary War.  (N)

Draper, Sharon M. – Copper Sun   (302 pages) Two fifteen-year-old girls—one a slave and the other an indentured servant—escape their Carolina plantation and try to make their way to Fort Moses, Florida, a Spanish colony that gives sanctuary to slaves.  (LC)

Lester, Julius – Time’s Memory   (230 pages) On a slave ship to America, a young African woman discovers she is pregnant. But this is no ordinary child—once in America, Amina realizes she has given birth to Ekundayo, the master of life and death.  Can a spirit child bring peace to the brutality of a slave’s existence?  (K)

Mosley, Walter – 47   (232 pages) Number 47, a fourteen-year-old slave boy growing up under the watchful eye of a brutal master in 1832, meets the mysterious Tall John, who introduces him to a magical science and also teaches him the meaning of freedom. (N)

Moss, Thylias – Slave Moth   (152 pages)  Varl, a slave girl who can read and write, plots her escape from the plantation she’s always known as home.  A novel told in verse.  (K)

Pate, Alexs D. – Amistad   (316 pages)  A fictionalized account of the 1839 mutiny aboard the Spanish slave ship Amistad includes John Quincy Adams' role in defending its instigator before the Supreme Court. (N)

Rinaldi, Ann  - Mine Eyes Have Seen  (273 pages) In the summer of 1859, fifteen-year-old Annie travels to the Maryland farm where her father, John Brown, is secretly assembling his provisional army prior to their raid on the United States arsenal at nearby Harpers Ferry.  (N)

Siegelson, Kim L. – Trembling Earth   (152 pages) In 1864, two boys, one a slave running toward freedom and one hoping to collect the reward for capturing him, make their way through Georgia's Okefenokee Swamp, relying on knowledge the white boy's father, disabled by the war, had passed on to him in happier times.  (N)

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