Bound for the North Star: True Stories of Fugitive Slaves

by Dennis Brindell Fradin

Book Overview

The stories of slaves who fled the South in search of freedom are some of the most riveting in American history. The fugitives usually left at night, with little or no food or money and only the light... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0395970172
• ISBN13: 9780395970171
• Release Date: January 2000
• Publisher: Clarion Books
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 1.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 7.2" x 9.8"
• Age Range: 12 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 7 and higher

Customer Reviews

Fascinating stories of true bravery, ingenuity and determination

I had wanted to include this book in my home library for some time and finally purchased it prior to beginning a unit for Black History Month. Although the reading level is above most of my elementary students they love hearing the stories paraphrased. Great illustrations, most contemporary, as well.

Bound for the North Star

I would strongly recommend this book to people who are either learning about slavery or really interesting in slavery and what the slaves had to go through. The book is about Harriet Tubman, an underground railroad conductor, who led more than three hundred men, women, and children out of slavery. Some slave owners even offered $40,000 for her head. The purpose of this book is to inform others about slavery and what the slaves had to go through while they were in slavery. Some kids think that they're in slave and their parents are their masters, but this book tells you the extreme conditions that the slaves had to go through. Kids these days don't go through near as extreme conditions as the slaves back then. Allison K.

An excellent introduction to the topics of slavery and...

...the underground railroad. While this book is obviously aimed for the "young adult" crowd, it would serve as an excellent primer for ANYONE interested in learning more about that sad, sad topic in America's history: slavery. The author includes 12 stories about slaves who escaped north, mostly with the help of the Underground Railroad. Each story describes a different type of escape or incident - varying from the case of Solomon Northrup - a free black man who was drugged and sold into slavery while he was working in Washington, D.C. to John "Fed" Brown, a field slave who travelled a roundabout trip to freedom covering thousands of miles to John Price - an escaped slave who was captured in Ohio, but was eventually freed thanks to the near-riot of the Oberlin College community. The book ends up with the most famous member of the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman, and details a number of her exploits as a Conductor and as a Union Spy during the Civil War. As a reader, I appreciated the variety of types of escape stories - it did not get stale reading about the same type of escape and the variety of escape plans really was a wonderful testament to human creativity in the face of hardship.