Today we meet Moses, the 12-year-old runaway slave in Cindy Noonan's young adult (middle grade and junior high) novel, Dark Enough to See the Stars.
My name is Moses. My mama gave me that name. She been telling me since I can remember that I was named after Moses in the Bible. She always said that Moses’ mama didn’t want him growing up no slave. She didn’t want me growing up one neither. Mama thinks that someday I’m gonna save my people just like he did. So no matter how many times Buck, the overseer, calls me darkie or boy or nigguh, I think about my real name that Mama gave me. . . . Click here to continue reading.
Book Description
Bloodhounds chase twelve-year-old slave Moses
as he follows the North Star to Pennsylvania on the Underground
Railroad. His mother had taught him to find the star before she was sold
to a plantation hundreds of miles away. Finally in Harrisburg, Moses
finds shelter with an Abolitionist family, but when the Fugitive Slave
Act becomes law, Northerners caught harboring runaways must pay a fine
and go to jail. Moses and a slave girl living with the family flee. They
escape by canal boat, steamship, and rail, but slave catchers pursue
them at every turn. Freedom in Canada seems far away. Will they ever
reach it?
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