Kim L. Siegelson (Author), Brian Pinkney (Illustrator)

From Booklist

Gr. 2-5, younger for reading aloud. Based on the Gullah legend of a slave rebellion at Ibo's Landing in the Sea Islands, this stirring picture book tells the story from the point of view of an African American child. Mentu is island born and has never known Africa or longed for it, but his beloved grandmother, Twi, is an Ibo conjure woman who remembers the times before. Unlike many who work in the fields, "harvesting what they could not keep," she is not broken by slavery. She teaches Mentu the old stories and songs, teaches him her secrets, and shows him how to beat the ancient rhythms on the goatskin drum between his knees. Then one hot, breathless day, a slave ship arrives with a whole village of Ibo from Benin: the Ibo people hear the island drums and think some magic has brought them home, but when they see the truth of where they are, they refuse to get off the ship. Twi calls to them ("The water can take us home"), and together they walk into the ocean to get home. Mentu grows up strong to pass on what Twi had taught him "through slave time and freedom time and on up to now time." As in the urban contemporary story Max Found Two Sticks (1994), Pinkney's signature colored scratchboard illustrations with swirling circular rhythmic lines show the drums that beat in the story and the connections they make, circles through sky, land, and ocean, and between people. In an afterword, Siegelson traces the legend, which she first heard from her grandmother as a ghost story, and extends it. This handsome picture book will pass it on. Hazel Rochman