It’s easy for biographies of figures like Harriet to slip into hagiography, but Petry keeps her tone level, shows the reader Harriet’s strengths and weaknesses, and places Harriet firmly in a historical setting without which Harriet’s own dream for freedom could never have been realized. Petry includes countless thought-provoking statements about the nature of freedom, the culture of slavery and African Americans, and even the responsibilities of people to bring about social justice. Nonetheless, this is a wonderfully written biography of an important figure in our country’s history. Petry’s biography of Tubman takes some liberties today’s nonfiction–even for children–demands more source notations for quotations and other less verifiable facts than Petry gives. Harriet eventually worked with the Union Army and ended her eventful life as a storyteller at the end of an era. Her danger only increased as tensions mounted in the fragile Union until the reward for her capture was $60,000. The rest of Harriet’s life, as they say, is history: after her successful escape on the Underground Railroad, Harriet returned multiple times to rescue her family members and others from slavery.
She condescended to make a pretty patchwork quilt for her marriage to her freeborn husband despite her impatience with indoor work, but John Tubman declined to follow his wife to freedom when she finally broke away. Eschewing the easier household work most young African American female slaves ended up doing, Harriet preferred the backbreaking outdoor work–and demonstrated prodigious strength early on.
And she practiced running away at an early age, too, ending up in a pigpen much like the Prodigal Son. Born to slaves on a Maryland plantation, she learned the meaning of hardship and hard work from birth. Harriet Tubman, aka Araminta, Minta, Minty, and, finally, Moses, looms large on the landscape of our country’s turbulent 19th century.
She had always had the makings of a legend in her: the prodigious strength, the fearlessness, the religious ardor, the visions she had in which she experienced moments of prescience. Recommended For: Middle grades, ages 8-12, and up! *Harriet Tubman: Conductor on the Underground Railroad by Ann Petry.
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