Henry’s
Freedom Box
Levine, E. (2007). Henry’s freedom box. New
York, NY: Scholastic.
Awards: 2008
Caldecott Honor Book
Henry’s Freedom
Box is a multicultural/historical fiction
book. The protagonist in the story
was a young boy who grows up as a slave.
The author really focused on the main character, showing emotion, and developing
a rounded character the reader could relate to. The events in the story give
the reader a true understanding of events that commonly happened to slaves and
their families.
The illustrations add to the story line, showing the emotions on the characters
faces. The illustration to the right depicts Henry who is mailing himself to
freedom in a small crate. The crate was
tossed and turned in the journey, in this particular illustration you can see
the look of anguish on Henry’s face, and the reader can tell Henry is very
uncomfortable.
The illustrator,
Kadir Nelson, used lots of line in his illustrations to show texture in the drawings. The illustrations in this book are very detailed
and the lines used create a greater sense of reality. The drawings seem very real; you can see the
wrinkles in the character’s clothing. There
is a lot of depth in the illustrations, which help the reader feel like they
are in the story.
On the
following website the illustrator has written a letter to his readers, he
describes the research he did to prepare and plan the primitive illustrations.
He was very concerned with his illustrations clearly depicting the time
period. The link also includes a slide show with the primary sources he used to
get inspiration for the illustrations.
This would be a great way to show students how illustrators use primary
sources to get ideas of what the time period really looked like.
The following
website has videos of the author answering questions about the book. She also reads the book aloud.
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