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Library | Call Number | Status |
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Searching... Bayport Public Library | J FICTION FOX | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
In this iconic, wrenching Newbery Medal winning book, a young Louisiana boy faces the horrors of slavery when he is kidnapped and forced to work on a slave ship.
Thirteen-year-old Jessie Bollier earns a few pennies playing his fife on the docks of New Orleans. One night, on his way home, a canvas is thrown over his head and he's knocked unconscious. When he wakes up, Jessie finds himself aboard a slave ship, bound for Africa. There, the Moonlight picks up ninety-eight black prisoners, and the men, women, and children, chained hand and foot, are methodically crammed into the ship's hold. Jessie's job is to provide music for the slaves to dance to on the ship's deck--not for amusement but for exercise, as a way to keep their muscles strong and their bodies profitable.
Over the course of the long voyage, Jessie grows more and more sickened by the greed of the sailors and the cruelty with which the slaves are treated. But it's one final horror, when the Moonlight nears her destination, that will change Jessie forever.
Set during the middle of the nineteenth century, when the illegal slave trade was at its height, The Slave Dancer not only tells a vivid and shocking story of adventure and survival but depicts the brutality of slavery with unflinching historical accuracy.
Author Notes
Paula Fox was born in Manhattan, New York on April 22, 1923. She briefly studied piano at the Juilliard School and spent 3 years at Columbia University but didn't graduate. Before becoming a writer, she worked as a salesgirl, a model, a worker in a rivet-sorting shop, a lathe operator at Bethlehem Steel, and a teacher of troubled children.
She wrote books for children and adults. Her children's books included Maurice's Room, Traces, Blowfish Live in the Sea, One-Eyed Cat, and The Eagle Kite. She received the Newbery Medal for The Slave Dancer in 1974 and the Hans Christian Andersen Award for her body of children's work in 1978. Her books for adults include Poor George, The Widow's Children, A Servant's Tale, and The God of Nightmares. Desperate Characters was adapted into a film starring Shirley MacLaine and Kenneth Mars. She also wrote two memoirs entitled Borrowed Finery and The Coldest Winter: A Stringer in Liberated Europe. She died on March 1, 2017 at the age of 93.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Excerpts
Excerpts
An Excerpt from The Slave Dancer I heard one piercing scream. My teeth began to chatter. Then a very small brown face rose above the rail as though it had flown up from the sea. It continued to rise slowly until its brown bare chest was visible. Then I saw dark hands around its waist. The hands lifted, the little girl's legs flew out, and I saw the head of the young man who had been carrying her. For a second, she sat on the deck, looking all around her, her eyes huge with amazement, then she crawled and jumped toward the rail but was forced back by the forward propulsion of the man who tottered over the rail, unable, it seemed, to bring his body any further. The child hugged the young man's neck frantically and buried her face in his hair. At that moment, Nicholas Spark bent his thin length and gripped the man's back as though he were gathering up cloth, and yanked him altogether over, the chains around his ankles striking the deck with a violent clanging. The clanging never ceased as one after another the captives struggled over the rail and were dropped or dragged onto the deck. How long did it all take? I'll never know. None of us moved. From the Trade Paperback edition. Excerpted from The Slave Dancer by Paula Fox All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
