About this item

Missouri, 1847When James first started school, his sister practically had to drag him there. The classroom was dark and dreary, and James knew everything outside was more exciting than anything he'd find inside.But his teacher taught him otherwise. "We make our own light here," Reverend Meachum told James. And through hard work and learning, they did, until their school was shut down by a new law forbidding African American education in Missouri. Determined to continue teaching his students, Reverend John Berry Meachum decided to build a new school-a floating school in the Mississippi River, just outside the boundary of the unjust law.Based on true events, Ron Husband's uplifting illustrations bring to life Deborah Hopkinson's tale of a resourceful, determined teacher; his bright, inquisitive students; and their refusal to accept discrimination based on the color of their skin.



About the Author

Deborah Hopkinson

Deborah Hopkinson is as award-winning of picture books, fiction, and nonfiction for young readers. In 2013 she received a Robert F. Sibert Honor and YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award honor for Titanic: Voices from the Disaster. She has won the SCBWI Golden Kite Award for Picture Book Text twice, for A Band of Angels and Apples to Oregon. Sky Boys, How They Built the Empire State Building, was a Boston Globe/Horn Book Honor awardee. She lives near Portland, Oregon. The Great Trouble, A Mystery of London, the Blue Death, and a Boy Called Eel won the OCTE Oregon Spirit Award and was named a Best Book of 2013 by School Library Journal and an Oregon Book Award finalist.In 2017, Deborah's awards include the Leslie Bradshaw Oregon Book Award for Courage and Defiance; the Jane Addams Peace Association award for Steamboat School; and the Green Earth Environmental Stewardship Award for Follow the Moon Home, which was also a finalist for the Cook STEM prize. Her middle grade novel A Bandit's Tale, The Muddled Misadventures of a Pickpocket was a Charlotte Huck Recommended book for fiction. Visit her on the web at www.deborahhopkinson.com and follow her on Twitter at @deborahopkinson.



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