I’m celebrating a book birthday today!
If you’d like a copy of HISTORY SMASHERS: THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD signed to your favorite reader or to your classroom or library, just order today from my local indie bookseller, The Bookstore Plus, and leave a note in the comments about how you’d like it signed. I’ll be signing at the store tomorrow, and I’d love to personalize a copy especially for your readers! The store will send out orders this week. Here’s a little more about the new book…
HISTORY SMASHERS: THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD is co-authored by Gwendolyn Hooks and illustrated by Damon Smyth. It tells the true story of slavery and resistance in the Americas. (Spoiler: It’s not all about the Quakers.)
This is a topic that teachers & librarians have been requesting since the series launched, and I’m so grateful that Gwen was game to work on it with me. Too often, when kids learn about the Underground Railroad, the stories center white Americans who sometimes helped freedom seekers along the way instead of focusing on the heroic people who were forced to risk everything just to be free. Gwen’s picture book ONA JUDGE OUTWITS THE WASHINGTONS is one of my favorites because it keeps the focus squarely on the freedom seekers themselves.
While Gwen and I were working on this History Smashers book, I was visiting a school in Vermont and chatting with some second graders over lunch. One boy was telling me how much he loved the picture book biographies his librarian shared, so I mentioned Gwen’s picture book to him.
“It’s about a woman who was enslaved by George Washington, and how she escaped and never got caught,” I told him.
“Wait,” he said. He looked confused. “George Washington had slaves?”
I nodded. “He enslaved hundreds of people on his plantation in Mount Vernon, both before and while he was president.”
His eyes got big. “I thought George Washington was a good guy!”
“Well,” I said. “It’s true that Washington led the Continental Army in the American Revolution and became our nation’s first president. It’s also true that he enslaved people. Both of those things are true.”
These are the sorts of stories that some people don’t want kids to learn about. They worry that kids won’t understand. But this young reader did. He nodded, asked his librarian to order Gwen’s book and some more of the History Smashers titles, and went on to tell me about his recent reading about some other historical figures and how they were heroes in some ways and not in others. That happens a lot, he said. (He’s right.)
Kids get it. They’re able to hold more than one truth at a time, and they get that history is complicated. They also desperately want to build a world that’s better and fair for everyone.
Ona Judge’s story is included in our new History Smashers book, too, one of many heroic accounts of Black freedom seekers who fought a system they knew was unjust. I’m so grateful that I get to work on this series, to have a small part in teaching kids about real history and helping them imagine the kind of future they’d like to build.