Today I read a gripping book, The Daring Escape of Ellen Craft, written by Cathy Moore and illustrated by Mary O’Keefe Young.

This is an early reader, a Carolrhoda “On My Own” book, that doesn’t have a lot of space for going into how awful slavery was or why owners let their slaves have passes to see their families and why they were allowed to work for neighbors and earn money. So it raises a lot of questions, which is a good thing. I thought there was on glitch caused, no doubt, by a lack of space. On one page there is a transition missing, I think. We move from a train trip to a boat trip with a little bump instead of smoothly, but none of that matters because the story is so gripping. From the first page I was rooting for Cathy. And then for her husband William, as soon as I met him.

The idea that a family could be celebrating Christmas and not realize it is wrong to own people as one owns a dog, is impossible for me to get my mind around. So I was desperately wanting Cathy and William to escape and I was so afraid that they would be caught and beaten.

One of the most intriguing things about the book, is that when people thought Cathy was a white man, they treated her with respect and when they thought she was a black woman they treated her like a dog. And yet she was the same person.