elijah of buxton by christopher paul curtis

It's one of the things I love about (among others), and CPC does it so very well here. One of my favorite narrative tricks is when an author uses a very limited first person viewpoint and is still able to let the reader know more than the narrator. CPC has struck just the right balance of acknowledging and showing the horrors, but without making it too overwhelming for his audience.

The last few chapters are truly haunting, and yet I wouldn't hesitate to have a 9 or 10 year old read this book. In the children's playing slavers and abolitionists (and Elijah's revelation about it), CPC even addresses the tendency to soften slavery in depictions for children. What Elijah's parents have told him about former slaves is insightful, sensitive, and seems very realistic. What an interesting and different perspective on slavery. The powerful ending is violent and unsettling, yet also manages to be uplifting. Curtis brings the story full-circle, demonstrating how Elijah the “fra-gile” child has become sturdy, capable of stealing across the border in pursuit of the crooked preacher, and strong enough to withstand a confrontation with the horrors of slavery. There's a rapscallion of a villain in the Right Reverend Deacon Doctor Zephariah Connerly the Third, a smart-talking preacher no one trusts, and, after 200 pages, a riveting plot: Zephariah makes off with a fortune meant to buy a family of slaves their freedom. Humor abounds: Elijah's best friend puzzles over the phrase “familiarity breeds contempt” and decides it's about sexual reproduction. Readers meet Buxton's citizens, people who have known great cruelty and yet are uncommonly polite and welcoming to strangers.

), but while Elijah's boyish voice represents the Newbery Medalist at his finest, the story unspools at so leisurely a pace that kids might easily lose interest. The arresting historical setting and physical comedy signal classic Curtis ( Bud, Not Buddy When Frederick Douglass, the “famousest, smartest man who ever escaped from slavery,” visited Buxton, he held baby Elijah aloft, declaring him a “shining bacon of light and hope,” tossing him up and down until the jostled baby threw up-on Douglass. The rest of his celebrity, Elijah reports in his folksy vernacular, stems from a “tragical” event. He was the first child “born free” to former slaves in Buxton, a (real) haven established in 1849 in Canada by an American abolitionist.

Elijah Freeman, 11, has two claims to fame.

Elijah of buxton by christopher paul curtis