One of my goals as a writer is to read every Newbery book. For this reason, I snatched this book from the Friends of the Library sale, despite the fact that I can’t check out a book for another 30 days—see previous blog.
One thing I noticed is writing criteria in the children’s publishing world has changed. Books written over twenty years ago contain more telling of scenery, feelings, and character reflection.
Now days, children’s authors have to compete with the fast pace world of computers, video games, and instant messaging to keep a child’s attention. Because of this, authors must be concise, using the most descriptive action verbs possible to make their story fast paced and to the point, while weaving the scenery and characterizations into the plot.
If I remember this point, I can understand why it is harder for me to want to read a book that starts with a lot of telling. However, despite the scenery set up (time period and location of the main character) , I enjoyed The Slave Dancer once the action finally started around chapter three.
This book tells the tale of a thirteen-year-old, boy named Jessie Bollier. Jessie is kidnapped to serve as fife player on a slave ship, the Moonlight. This is when the story took off, and it is where I learned to appreciate the author’s talent for description, which bored me in the beginning. The honest descriptions both fascinated and horrified me, as she vividly described the horrors put upon the 93 black slaves taken from their native land to be sold as slaves in the U.S. before the Civil War.
I recommend this book to any writer who needs to understand the SHOW vs. TELL in children’s literature, not to mention any older middle grade reader interested in historical fiction.
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