The Slave Dancer by Paula Fox
Let me first explain that I had no business reading this book. If was a kids' book, strictly. I picked it up when I was reading a librarians' blog and she seemed to think it was worth recommending. To kids.
I beg to differ. I wouldn't recommend this to any kid I know, and in fact, I'd be quick to un-recommend it. It's one of those books that's trying so hard to be "Newberry Medal" politically correct that it distorts history. Jessie is growing up in New Orleans near the end of the pre-emancipation period. He's poor and uneducated...yet--oddly--drawn to and disturbed by the atrocities of slavery all around him. When he's picked up and put to work on a slaving ship, he reacts strongly to the abuse of his fellow human beings. He reacts like a 20th century kid would. Isn't that convenient?
Once you swallow that bushel-sized basket of coal, the story becomes believable. He's just a kid, after all, and pretty powerless to change things. Toward the end it gets pretty good.
But, oh! How it hurts! Given the time, place, and characters, why couldn't she have written a story of how a normal (clueless!) kid comes to understand the true atrocities of slavery?
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