Underground

I searched and searched for a really great historical fiction book for this book review. The book that I will review is titled Underground and it is written by Shane Evans. This book is about a family who is on the search of freedom and finally founds it when they discover the underground rail road that leads them to north and to freedom. This book falls under the historical fiction genre. This genre is characterized by a fictional story that contain possible real people, real events, or time periods that include culture of the past (Cullian et al., 2010). They key to a good historical fiction is factual information.

The illustrations of this story make up most of the story! Prior to reading this book, I never realized how much a picture alone can tell a story. The illustrations make up the entire book. As you flip the page, you realize that the images are actually telling you the story as each page only has one to five words on them. The readers are able to see how the family travels at night, and crawl and hide underground and outside. The readers can see as they sleep outside, and keep silent when the dogs walk past in search for them. The illustrator did an amazing job at illustrating this story.

The setting of this book is not specific, but takes place at night during the early 1800s when they underground railroad was formed. The setting is pivotal, because it is part of the story that makes the book a historical fiction; without the setting, the book would be meaningless. The characters of this book are not really given too many qualities, which means they do not contain much characterization. The author does not discuss the names or the relationships between the characters. The theme of this story is that freedom is something that we all take for granted every day, it is hard to imagine that only a short 150 years ago, African Americans were not given the freedom that we as human beings deserve.

After reading this book, children can discuss what freedom means to them, and how they are able to exercise their right of freedom every day. Another activity that can be used with this book is to have children do a project in which they have to research what the underground railroad was, and how it was used to free thousands of slaves. By doing this activity, children will learn about a sad but crucial point in our nation’s history that affected millions of people.

I recommend this book to any person looking to teach children about slavery, and the underground railroad. This book is a great way to begin a lesson about Harriet Tubman, Fredrick Douglas, and many other people who played a huge role in rescuing slaves. It is a book that can be understood most readers, although the meaning that they will pull from the book will differ depending on the age of the reader.

Cullian, B., Galda, L., Sipe, L. (2010). Literature and the child. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.

Evans, S. (2011). Underground. Roaring Book Press: New York, NY.