The Gift of Freedom: How Harriet Tubman Rescued Her Brothers

Gr 1-3–On the night Harriet Tubman escaped from enslavement, she sang. It was a song of farewell, a song that said she was headed somewhere greater. With help from the Underground Railroad, Tubman made it from Maryland to Philadelphia, PA. She appreciated her freedom but knew that she needed to help others find freedom as well. Thanks to her, many enslaved people gained the gift of freedom, including her brothers. While many may be familiar with Tubman, few may know of her epic escapes, including the one featured in this book where she rescued her brothers. This is not Turner’s first work about Tubman; she also wrote An Apple for Harriet Tubman, which takes a look at a young Tubman striving for freedom. Turner’s words and Freeman’s emotion-laden pictures effectively work in tandem with each other, with some pages being entirely illustrations and in other pages, words draw the focus. Young readers can easily tell what’s happening even on the pages with little or few words. Individuals of various skin tones are featured in the pages.