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Book Reviewed by:Set in 1917 and inspired by the author’s true family history, this is the poignant story of a remarkable friendship and the perils of small-town justice.
The last thing Harry “Dit” Sims expects when Emma Walker comes to town is to become friends. Proper-talking, brainy Emma doesn’t play baseball or fish too well, but she sure makes Dit think, especially about the differences between black and white. But soon Dit is thinking about a whole lot more when the town barber, who is black, is put on trial for a terrible crime. Together Dit and Emma come up with a daring plan to save him from the unthinkable.
Set in 1917 and inspired by the author’s true family history, this is the poignant story of a remarkable friendship and the perils of small-town justice
Middle-grade readers are in luck. Levine has written a richly-realized tale of a powerful best-friendship and a boy's passage into manhood during a shameful and violent period in America's past...continued
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(Reviewed by Jo Perry).
By present day standards Moundville was a small town in 1917 and still is today,
but according to information presented by the
Moundville Archaeological Park, 800 years ago it was the location of
possibly the largest city in North America. The present-day town is
named after the 26 prehistoric burial mounds that are all that visibly remains
of the Mississippian culture that lived on the site from about A.D.
1000 to 1450.
At its most populous, the conurbation spanned about 300 acres (about half a
square mile) and had a population of about one thousand with an estimated
further ten thousand living in the surrounding valley.
Excavated burial sites have yielded grave goods from a socially complex society...
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