Despite her age, Ruth Ellen finds connections between her life and his all on her own, noting that it’s “the story of a boy / leaving behind what he knew / and heading to what he don’t / just like me.” She also reads aloud from the book, and the changing scenery outside often links up in powerful, symbolic ways. As she journeys from a life of oppression to the shining promise of the North, Ruth reads and learns about the social reformer and abolitionist Frederick Douglass. The story is essentially Ruth Ellen recounting her own journey in the Great Migration–the post-Civil War time when millions of African Americans left the South–through prose that’s poem-like at times which allows Cline-Ransome to highlight key words and ideas through lineation choices, as you can see here:īefore she left, Ruth Ellen’s teacher gave her a copy of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, which she reads along the way. In this story, a young narrator (Ruth Ellen) is taking the Silver Meteor train north with Mama and Daddy to find a new home, a new life, and a new future. With this latest collaboration, Overground Railroad, they’re revealing another vital story from African American history.

Payne, Game Changers: The Story of Venus and Serena Williams, and Before She Was Harriet. But for Cline-Ransome and Ransome, it’s a terrific pairing, as we’ve seen with their collaborations on such fine books as The Power of Her Pen: The Story of Groundbreaking Journalist Ethel L. Whenever I see a husband-wife team do the authoring and illustrating on the same picture book, I’m kind of in awe because it just wouldn’t work for most couples.

Van Cleave (Owner/Operator of Only Picture Book ) and freelance author/illustrator Kelly Light.

Overground railroad book