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Summary
Summary
When Addy finds a little boy floating down the river in a basket, she's surprised. When he calls to the fish to jump out of the river and into Addy's wagon, she's speechless. And when the fish obey, she knows for a fact that life on the Plenty Plantation is about to change! In this original tall tale, Jerdine Nolen has created a hero with the strength of fifty men, a heart as big as all outdoors, and a mysterious gift for spiriting slaves away to freedom.
Bulletin Blue Ribbon Best of 2000 Award and Best Children's Books 2000 (PW)
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Folklore and history give an uncommonly rich patina to this freshly inspiring original tale set in slavery times. Readers will immediately recognize that Nolen (Harvey Potter's Balloon Farm) has set her sights high: the tale opens with an unmistakable reference to the story of Moses in the bulrushes. Addy, a slave on the Plenty Plantation, discovers a boy floating in a basket when Mr. Plenty sends her to fish by the riverbank. But the boy, Jabe, is no defenseless babe. To thank Addy for bringing him to shore, Jabe gives her a golden pear ("This must be the fruit of heaven," she sighs), and then plants its seeds by the river. Setting the pattern for many extraordinary feats to come, Jabe calls out to the fish that have eluded Addy's attempts to catch them, and they virtually fly right into Addy's wagon. Within a season, Jabe has grown into a full-grown man with "the strength of fifty" and the seeds have sprouted into a fruit-bearing pear tree. The plantation experiences unprecedented prosperity--but slaves begin to disappear without a trace. "Maybe Moses come in the night," says a slave still at the plantation, but Addy attributes the escapes to Jabe and that pear tree, with "the North Star shining through its branches." Nolen and Nelson give this inventively tall tale a welcome subtlety. The author draws on a variety of traditions: the equation of Moses with Harriet Tubman; the African-American folktale that gave its title to Virginia Hamilton's The People Could Fly; the legends of Paul Bunyan and John Henry; even the language of the Gospels. Nolen provides just enough information to enable readers to draw their own conclusions as to the identity of Big Jabe and the nature of the pear tree--and she makes readers want to ponder these questions. Nelson (Brothers of the Knight) resists the temptation of hyperbole. His finely hatched watercolor and gouache illustrations emphasize images of slave life; when he does depict Big Jabe's fantastic feats, his naturalistic style permits him to depict them with an apparent realism. In this way, Nelson supports Nolen in using superhuman elements to distill all-too-human truths. This eloquent tale neither demeans the characters nor forces readers to identify directly with the characters' suffering. Instead, author and artist empower the audience to confront an unbearable history and come away with hope. Ages 6-up. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
(Primary, Intermediate) Part magical savior, part tall-tale hero, Big Jabe personifies the triumph of African Americans who (miraculously it must sometimes have seemed) escaped from slavery. At the behest of her master, Mr. Plenty, Miss Addy goes fishing and finds little Jabe floating Moses-like in a basket. The boy fills her wagon with fish and also gives her a luscious pear, whose seed swiftly matures to a tree in its first year. Jabe, too, is full-grown in time to harvest that same summer's extraordinary abundance. His Herculean abilities leave the slaves with luxuriously little to do, which so troubles their mean-spirited overseer that he punishes first one and then another as surrogates for Jabe, whom Mr. Plenty protects. Each unjust punishment is followed by a sudden storm during which the punished and their families are spirited away without a trace. Only Addy understands that Jabe and the pear tree-the North Star shining through its branches-are involved in these mysterious escapes. When Addy herself is accused of witchcraft and chained, she too vanishes, and eventually Jabe himself moves on, ""though he turned up at different times in different places throughout the South. And everywhere he did, burdens were lifted."" Jerdine Nolen recounts her original tale with a light touch and lyrical voice that add depth and resonance to its telling imagery and serious overtones. Kadir Nelson's gouache-and-watercolor illustrations are lovely: full-bleed spreads pull readers into a lush summer when every plant and creature is vibrant with health. Yet he also effectively conveys the rigorous life of the slaves via their leanness, their clothing, and even in the way he depicts a meal when, thanks to Jabe, there is enough fish for all: dark earth tones predominate in the firelit scene while heaps of well-cleaned fish bones bespeak the hunger that usually prevailed. This powerful story will be particularly effective shared aloud.j.r.l. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Ages 6^-9. Part Moses, part John Henry, the man who leads the slaves to freedom in this original tall tale first appears on the plantation as a smiling little boy floating in a basket on the river. In just a few months he has grown into the giant, Jabe, with the strength of 50 ("He could weed a whole field of soybeans before sunup, hoe the back forty by midday, and mend ten miles of fence by sunset"). He lightens the burden of hard labor, and when the people face punishment, he helps them disappear. Fish jump from the roiling river at his cry, and no one goes hungry. He can call up a twister and the next day a slave family has vanished. As in her picture book In My Momma's Kitchen (1999), Nolen dramatizes the strength of community and of story. Nelson's full-page pictures in ink, watercolor, and gouache show life in the Quarters and also the wild glory of the natural world that gives Big Jabe his mythic power. --Hazel Rochman
School Library Journal Review
Gr 2-5-This original tall tale tells of an unusual African American who frees the slaves on Plenty Plantation. The story is framed by a contemporary boy hearing about the past from Momma Mary. She tells of the young slave, Addy, who finds a boy in a basket while she is fishing. The child can do miraculous things, like call the fish out of the water when they're not biting, or harvest the cotton fields in a night and a day when he grows older. Jabe makes sure that the slaves get their fair share of everything, too, but the overseer doesn't appreciate him, and takes out his frustrations on the other slaves. When they mysteriously disappear in the night, only Addy seems to know that Jabe is responsible, and, when she is put in chains and about to be sold, he rescues her, too. Nolen's writing draws readers into the narrative and presents the magical aspects matter-of-factly. The author uses traditional folklore motifs to good effect in creating this larger-than-life hero. Nelson's watercolor-and-gouache paintings bring the characters fully to life and provide a realistic and historically accurate setting for the fantastic events. The illustrations, particularly the cover of Jabe striding tall above the trees and the scenes around the plantation, highlight the fantasy even as they make the story real.-Ellen A. Greever, University of New Orleans, LA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Nolen (In My Momma's Kitchen, 1999) rears up a new tall-tale hero, with the strength of 50 and a hidden agenda. The lad, who floats down the river and into the arms of Simon Plenty's house slave, Addy, shows early signs of unusual ability, calling fish out of the water until Addy's wagon is piled high. By that June, young Jabe is a full-grown man, capable of mending ten miles of fence between midday and sundown. Like the pear tree he plants, which grows to full size in one season "with the North Star shining through its branches," all of the crops on the plantation come in with unprecedented abundance that year. Only the overseer is displeased--even more so when each slave who feels his displeasure disappears with his family in the wake of a strange storm that wipes out any sign of a trail. Addy whispers that Jabe is "taking them to the pear tree," which is to say pointing them North to freedom. Nelson (Brothers of the Knight, not reviewed) takes Jabe from a rawboned child with an engaging grin to brawny adulthood, placing him into historical scenes that rival Trina Schart Hyman's for fine detail and strongly drawn, expressive figures. In the end, Jabe leaves as suddenly as he came, and is last seen striding away, towering over the trees. Like Virginia Hamilton's Drylongso (1999) and unlike John Henry, Big Jabe seems not just larger than life, but a force of nature, subtle, secret, untouchable--and that undercurrent of mystery gives his story a mythic power. (Picture book. 7-10) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
