Home Feed
Home
Search
Search
Add Review, Blurb, Quote
Add
Activity
Activity
Profile
Profile
The Slave Dancer
The Slave Dancer | Paula Fox
3 posts | 12 read | 2 to read
Newbery Medal Winner: A young Louisiana boy faces the horrors of slavery when he is kidnapped and forced to work on a slave ship in this iconic novel. 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 hes 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 ships hold. Jessies job is to provide music for the slaves to dance to on the ships decknot for amusement but for exercise, as a way to 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 its 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.
Amazon Indiebound Barnes and Noble WorldCat Goodreads LibraryThing
Pick icon
100%
review
ravenlee
The Slave Dancer | Paula Fox
post image
Mehso-so

Tough to review this one: it‘s an uncomfortable read, as fifer Jessie is pressed onto a slaver bound to Benin. It‘s sometimes graphic and often depressing. Might it be important? Maybe, but for sure it‘s not appropriate for my 7-year-old third-grader. I‘ll consider it when we come around to this era of history again in seventh grade.

quote
Christinak
The Slave Dancer | Paula Fox
post image

“They‘ve different laws than us.They‘ve entirely stopped the slave trade in their own country—the worse for them—and would like us to copy them in their #folly.Why, the trade is the best trade there is!Black Gold, we call it! Still, there‘s one way they help us. The native chiefs are so greedy for our trade goods, they sell their people cheaper than they ever did to tempt us to run the British blockade. So we profit despite the damned Englishmen.”

36 likes1 comment
blurb
everlocalwest
The Slave Dancer | Paula Fox
post image

I love this vintage library bound edition! Haven't read the book yet though. #mcpl #mctbr