This beautiful book shares the story of one black family’s move north in 1964, from Alabama to Nebraska. It is a narrative text written in poetic language. It can be used as a mentor text when talking about African American history, as an example of the use of repetition, alliteration and assonance, sensory imagery, personification, and onomatopoeia, as narrative nonfiction, or to show a narrative story arc.
There’s an example from the book, showing Harrington’s poetic use of language:
“Lunchtime, are you hungry?”
Picnic basket and paper plates,
Big Mama’s tea cakes
potato salad and lemonade,
cold chicken and corn bread.
The car smells like chicken.
our fingers taste salty sweet.
We’re riding in a lemonade car,
a yellow station wagon, heading North.
To see the book cover, check out this link!
Here is a photo of author, Janice Harrington from http://www.illinoisauthors.org
Great Mentor Texts 