In honor of National Poetry Month, I will be posting two reviews each week during the month of April! One of my reviews each week will be focused on a picture book verse narrative. I have become more interested in the ways in which authors for children incorporate verse narratives into their writing beyond the novel form (picture books and shorter narrative poems). I have explored this in a few of my reviews previously. At the end of January the American Library Association announced the winners of the Youth Media Awards, and Ashley Bryan's picture book Freedom Over Me: Eleven Slaves, Their Lives and Dreams Brought to Life (2016) was selected as a Newbery Honor Book, a Coretta Scott King Author Honor Book, and a Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor Book.The Plot: Freedom Over Me is a collection of twenty-one poems in which Bryan imagines the lives and dreams of eleven slaves. Bryan explains in his author's note that the inspiration for this collection came when he "acquired a collection of slave-related documents... dated from the 1820s to the 1860s." The estate appraisement document that Bryan works from lists only the slaves' names and prices as they appear next to livestock and farm equipment. Bryan further notes: "My art and writing of this story aim to bring the slaves alive as human beings. I began by creating painted portraits of these eleven slaves. I studies each one, listening for their voices. I wrote what I heard in free verse to give emphasis to their words." The collection includes an introductory poem in the voice of Mrs. Mary Fairchilds, followed by a reproduction of the actual document upon which Bryan based the collection, and two poems written in the voice of ten of the eleven slaves listed in the document.
The Poetry: Bryan's free verse poems begin as primarily descriptive, with each character declaring her/his identity as a member of the Fairchilds' estate. Gradually, the poem expands the narrative behind the selling of the Fairchilds' estate. These poems employ lyricism and imagery to delve into the inner workings and longings of each character. For example, in the poem "John," the sixteen-year-old speaker describes himself as a "birthday gift" to Mrs. Fairchild, and the poem ends on his dream of freedom, "my thoughts of escaping / to freedom / grow stronger every day" and "Oh Freedom, Oh Freedom, / Oh Freedom over me!" According to the end pages, these last lines and the title of the collection come from the spiritual "Oh Freedom!": "which likely came into being soon after the end of slavery.... Like many African American spirituals, the song has more than one meaning, and was commonly sung as part of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s."
The Page: The visual elements of each page of the picture book are quite fascinating. Bryan juxtaposes a portrait of each slave with a collaged background of newspaper clippings, images, and handwritten legal documents. The facing page includes a poem titled after the name of the speaker of the poem ("Peggy") and usually appears on a dull-colored background. The next spread includes a poem on a brightly-colored background, entitled with the character's name and the word "dreams" ("Peggy dreams"). This poem is mirrored with a painting of the character engaged in an her/his artistry (whether cooking, carpentry, basket making, or painting). This painting often includes the character surrounding by individuals from his/her community.Bryan's verse narrative is a beautifully constructed, and the poems together with the inclusion of an actual historical document come together to create a thoughtful addition to historical visual literature for young readers. I highly recommend Freedom Over Me and give it five stars. I also suggest Reading While White's spotlight on #ownvoices post on the book and the New York Times article "Black Lives Didn’t Matter: New Children’s Books Tell Slaves’ Real Stories" as companions to this picture book.
