Now that I have children of my own to whom I can read books like Overground Railroad by Lesa Cline-Ransome and James Ransome, it is taking all my restraint not to punctuate every other page of this book with little asides like, “Do you kids know how lucky you are to even have books like this right now?” and “Are you fully appreciating how much better your sense of history is going to be than mine ever was?” I am good. Heck, I only got the most superfluous smattering of information about the Underground Railroad, and most of that was due to Virginia Hamilton’s The House of Dies Drear, but I digress. Pretty much I can guarantee that unless you were part of the slightest sliver of students, odds are back in the day you had never heard of the Overground Railroad or The Great Migration.

Now I don’t care how amazing your education was in the 1980s.

But of course the unspoken suggestion there is that this is history we never learned in school. The standard joke amongst children’s librarians is that we learn most of our American history through children’s books. Her traveling companions are Mama and Daddy, and a book given to her by her teacher - The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas: An American Slave.Īnd, they begin their life of freedom in the North.Īn absolutely beautiful book by the husband and wife team who created Before She Was Harriet. Through poetry, Ruth Ellen tells the story of her family's Great Migration, and shares her views of the passing landscape as she occupies a seat in the 'colored' car. They boarded a train, headed for a better life in New York The father was a sharecropper, running from a system that kept him forever indebted to the landlord.

Ruth Ellen must remain calm and patient as she embarks on a journey to a new tomorrow, which many regard as 'The Promised Land.' Trust in the belief that a better future is possible, and powerful love of family are prominent themes in the story.They left at the crack of dawn, worried that the owner of the farm would find they were leaving without his permission.

Characters in the story honor both the differences and parallels between their journey and the one enslaved people took 100 years before the events in this book. As stated in the Author's Note, this book is about 'people who were running from and running to at the same time.' The story touches upon the dangerous nature of the journey, as Ruth Ellen and her sharecropper family must flee their current home in secret, due to fear of harsh punishment from the landowner, as in harrowing tales of the Underground Railroad. OVERGROUND RAILROAD is a fictional story that provides a glimpse into the world of millions of African American families, who escaped destitution in the South and secretly journeyed toward legal and financial freedom in more urban communities across America during the Great Migration.

Overground railroad by lesa cline ransome