Morning Star

Gr 4–6—Alternating chapters tell parallel stories of two black girls who lived 150 years apart. Flower has escaped slavery with her family and is on the run toward Canada and freedom. Felicia has recently moved with her mother and grandmother from Toronto to a quieter suburb and is starting eighth grade at a new school. As the stories alternate, there are connections, some subtle and some less so. Both girls face racism, Flower from slave catchers and Felicia from the resident "mean girl" in her classroom. When Flower is feeding drops of water to her gravely ill infant brother, Felicia is doing the same to a homeless kitten she finds. Felicia begins riding lessons with a horse named Morning Star, and the boat that eventually carries Flower and her family across Lake Erie to freedom shares that name. While the alternating voices are an interesting way to share the stories of these two girls, the execution falls short. Neither story develops fully on its own: characters are two-dimensional, the pace is uneven, and dialogue is often stilted. Direct students who are interested in Canada's involvement in the Underground Railroad to Christopher Paul Curtis's Elijah of Buxton (Scholastic, 2007) or Elisa Carbone's Stealing Freedom (Knopf, 1998).—Kim Dare, Fairfax County Public Schools, VA