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Harriet Tubman: Fighter for Freedom!

by James Buckley Jr. and Izeek Esidene
2020 / 94 pages

Harriet Tubman (1822-1913) was an American black woman born into slavery who escaped the South only to go back again and again to show other slaves the way to freedom. She also served in the American Civil War as both a guide for Northern forces, and as a nurse. Even during the war, she continued making trips to free slaves.

Biographies can sometimes be dry and dusty, but one advantage of this comic-book format is that it allows for an era that survives only in black-and-white photos to be brought to life in full color.

One wonderful surprise in this secular book, was how Harriet is shown repeatedly pleading to, praising, and thanking God. It was made obvious that what she was doing was based on a love for her Lord. She could be brave because she knew she was in God’s hands.

Like the other American-focused editions of this “Show Me History!” series, this comic is narrated by two kids, a boy and a girl, which makes it all the more accessible for early readers. Sam, is actually a young “Uncle Sam” and his friend Libby, clad all in green, is also known as “lady liberty” (aka the Statue of Liberty) and their back-and-forth banter really adds some fun, especially in Tubman’s life, which is otherwise a pretty serious story. This has me excited to check out other titles in the series.

Cautions

In a book in which God is being praised dozens of times, I don’t think it a stretch to presume that the one time someone “interjects” God’s Name that it is been done as a short prayer of thanks. I include the instance here for you to decide. Harriet’s niece Kizzy is escaping and desperately looking for her aunt. On spotting Harriet ahead, Kizzy says to her husband: “I see her, John, oh Lord… I see her!”

Another caution concerns how the book presumes that the South’s secession was a problem that needed to be solved by war. While estimates vary, at least 600,000 soldiers died in the war, or more than 2% of the population of the time. And that doesn’t even include the uncounted number of civilian deaths. Southern slavery was wicked, but Great Britain ended slavery without a war, so it is worth considering if Abraham Lincoln did the right thing. The indivisibility of the country is also worth considering in our own time when up until just recently abortion was legalized nationwide for 50 years, leading to more than 60 million deaths. Might that number have been smaller had pro-life states had the ready option of leaving the union? I will add, though, that the fact this comic doesn’t question the righteousness of the Civil War is hardly unusual, and in that sense, it is not all that notable.

Conclusion

At 94 pages, this has the room to go a lot deeper than most kids’ biographies ever do. I think it’d be great for any kids 10-14 who wanted to learn about either US history, or about some of the Christians who helped fight slavery.

So far, I’ve checked out two others in this “Show Me History!” series.

Benjamin Franklin: Inventor of the Nation was also very good. The man himself is PG-rated – he had kids out of wedlock, and possibly two wives at the same time – so even though the comic only briefly touches on those details, that one might be better for teens than preteens. And, in sharp contrast with the Harriet Tubman title, there’s really no Christian content. But his life as an inventor, printer, diplomat, and one of the American Founding Fathers is quite the read!

Abraham Lincoln: Defender of the Union was also a quick and easy read, but it shares a caution with Harriet Tubman. The book presumes that the Union had to be preserved, even at the cost of 600,000 men’s lives. That’s an especially big part of this book, making it a bigger caution in this case, so I might go with a different comic Lincoln biography: Rick Geary’s The Murder of Abraham Lincoln.

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Book Reviews, Graphic novels, Teen non-fiction

The life of Frederick Douglass

A graphic narrative of a slave's journey from bondage to freedom by David F. Walker Illustrated by Damon Smyth 2018 / 173 pages Frederick Douglass lived his first 20 years as a slave, then spent the next 25 speaking against the evils of slavery. After the American Civil War and the emancipation of American slaves, he spent his last 30 years fighting the bigotry that still lingered. And in his final decade, defying all social expectations of the time, he married a white woman, Helen Pitts. While a graphic novel biography can't do this complicated figure full justice – the man himself wrote three separate autobiographies in the attempt – the size of this one, and the evident research backing it make for a very good introduction to its subject. As we follow his life, from plantation to town, to escape to the North, we get to meet along with him key figure in the American battle to end slavery. He knew Harriet Tubman, the lady who repeatedly ventured to the South to bring slaves to freedom in the North. John Brown hid at his house after the white abolitionist's unsuccessful attempt to start the Civil War some six years before it eventually began. Douglass was both an opponent and then an ally to Lincoln, due to largely Lincoln's vacillating opposition to slavery. Later he became a friend and then an enemy of women's rights advocate Susan B. Anthony, the change of relationship due this time to a compromise by Douglass when he decided to support black's voting rights even when they no longer came as a package deal with women's voting rights. This is quite the story, and it is well told. CAUTIONS Its important readers understand that some of what's depicted is deduction, and not clearly established fact. But a read of the introduction will help readers tell what's what. A word of warning is due for at least a couple uses of the "n-word" in the book, though with the topic matter, that is as you might expect. There is also some partial nudity. None of it sexual, and it could even be described as modestly done: one scene is a black woman being whipped, naked from the waist up, but her front is either away from view, or hid in the shadows. There are also three completely naked slaves shown, but all are hunched over, in a seated, almost fetal position with arms wrapped around their knees so no genitals are shown, though the top of one's buttocks is. The overarching concern would be the brutality. There is no gratuitous violence - but there is violence. Finally, while we get to hear Douglass debate with himself about how slavery should be fought, and whether violence was warranted or not, and whether it was right to compromise on the women's vote, we aren't offered any other perspective. So readers will have to apply their own biblical lens to this for themselves. Altogether that would make this a book for older teens maybe 14 and up. CONCLUSION The target audience for this book, teens, aren't always fans of history books, perhaps because they've been exposed to too many of the wrong sort, texts that make it all about dates and names. What a joy it is, then, to discover a page-turning biography like this. The Frederick Douglass we meet here, while not exhaustively explored, is fleshed out, and consequently memorable. We've now met him, and won't forget him....