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Nelson, Marilyn

Papa's Free Day Party

32 pp. | Just Us | July, 2021 | Trade ISBN 978-0-940975-72-9 $17.95
(2) K-3 Illustrated by Wayne Anthony Still. An older family member's birthday takes on special significance with the sharing of his life story. It is 1924, and ­eight-year-old Johnnie cannot ­understand why Papa does not know his age. Papa explains that when he was born in the 1860s, the births of Black people were hardly documented, although he speculates: "I figure I must be near about 60, given that I was born a year or two after freedom come in 1865." After Papa's father escaped enslavement and completed service in the Civil War (fighting on "the right side of the war between slavery and justice"), he bought land and settled into farming. One night "men wearing white hoods" burn their house, and Papa's father tells him to run north. Days later, a white family with a son about his age welcomes Papa into their home. The boys grow into young adulthood until Papa has to leave the area for his safety following a racial incident. The family sends him away with livestock and money to buy a farm. He finally makes a home outside the prosperous all-Black town of Boley, Oklahoma. Inspired by his story, Johnnie decides to celebrate Papa's birthday on the day of Lee's surrender to Grant at Appomattox, when "the war for freedom was won." In honor of Papa, she renames the occasion his Free Day. Nelson's (most recently Lubaya's Quiet Roar, rev. 11/20) lengthy but engaging narrative, complemented by expressive and realistic art by Still (a descendent of the ­Underground Railroad conductor and historian ­William Still), is a celebratory tribute to the value of family history ­sustained by the power of intergenerational ­storytelling. Based on true stories about the author's grandfather, as explained in an afterword.
Reviewer: Pauletta Brown Bracy | Horn Book Magazine Issue: September, 2021

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