Children's Literature
- Ken Marantz and Sylvia Marantz
Johnson takes us back to a Texas cotton plantation at the time of Emancipation. A young girl talks about the hard work under the hot sun, and the surprise and delight as the word spreads from port and town to the fields that the slaves are "now and forever free." All the family has a picnic by the water, and laughs and tells stories "as free people" into the night. The text is spare but poetic, evoking the emotions experienced. The next morning, everything is "all different now." The naturalistic but dramatic watercolors on mainly double pages bring to life both the time and place as well as the feelings of the characters.
