This book in under 40 pages taught me more about this fascinating black man than I ever learned in school. This book covers the first part of his life how he became free and what he did with his freedom. It's superbly illustrated, the story is well written, and altogether paints a beautiful illustration of a man all kids should learn about. ( )

From the youngest age, Frederick Douglass fed his insatiable desire to become literate, viewing it as his passport to freedom. After securing his own independence, he became a leading voice in the abolitionist and suffragist movements. Includes Timeline, Bibliography, Document of Freedom.

I confess I know little about Frederick Douglass. Somehow in all the books I've read of slavery, the Civil War, and The Civil Rights Movement, I skipped Frederick Douglass. After reading this, I vow to learn more.

Born a slave, he was fortunate to learn to read by listening to Sophia Auld, the mistress of the house of his owner.
when the husband, and owner of Douglass saw that he was learning to read, he quickly stopped this and noted that "Teaching a slave to read, will make him unfit to be a slave!" Listening to the Auld children read and speak, he was determined that the only way out of slavery was to escape and to continue to learn.

Hired out by his master, he worked in shipyards. Most of his earnings went directly to his master. Meeting free men on this job, Using papers as a free seasmen's papers, he boarded the ship and fled into the world of freedom. Ending in New Bedford, Mass, which was a ship yard .

Breaking into the confidence to speak regarding slavery and all the horrible result of this cruel system, he met John Brown, the famous abolitionist. In an attempt to obtain the arsenal of weapons at Harper's Ferry, John Brown tried to talk Frederick into helping with his plan. Frederick Doglass thought the plan was dangerous and would not result into anything but failure.

An enlightening true story of Frederick Douglass. The book outlines his live from inception to the passing of the 13th Amendment. Douglass was born a slave who learned to read by accident and then purposefully. He escaped slavery to the north by using a sailors freedom papers. He joined the abolitionist and gave speeches on his experience as a slave. He would help to fight and abolish slavery legally in 1865 via the 13th Amendment ( )

The late author, a five-time Coretta Scott King Award winner, begins this book by explaining:

“This is the story of how one man’s careful decisions and many accomplishments not only made his own life better but in many ways changed the history of America.”

Douglass was born into slavery in 1818. He watched how the white children lived where he was a slave, and he wanted to have the same opportunities they did to build a good life for himself. His owner would not let his wife teach Frederick to read along with the other children because “[t]eaching a slave to read will make him unfit to be a slave.” So Frederick reasoned that learning to read is what he must do to change his life. And he set out to do so however and whenever he could.

The book outlines his eventual escape from slavery at age 20, his work for both abolition of slavery and for women’s rights, the writing of his autobiography in 1845, and his decision not to join John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry. The actions he took both during and after the Civil War are also briefly covered.

At the end of the book, there is a timeline and small bibliography.

Illustrator Floyd Cooper has won multiple awards for his artwork. He uses a technique he calls “a subtractive process” by painting an illustration board with oil paint, and then applying an eraser to the paintings. The result lends warmth and texture to his pictures.

Evaluation: Myers chose an unusual selection of facts to highlight about Douglass’s life. I have to admit I prefer the children’s book on Douglass by Doreen Rappaport (my review is here). But the two books don’t overlap that much, and so could definitely be used not only to complement one another, but more importantly to demonstrate how histories by different authors paint different pictures of their subjects. ( )