The Drinking Gourd
Written by F.N. Monjo
Narrated by Rick Adamson
4.5/5
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About this audiobook
The stars of the Big Dipper have led a runaway slave family to Deacon Fuller's house, a stop on the underground railroad. Will Tommy Fuller be able to hide the runaways from a search party -- or will the secret passengers be discovered and their hope for freedom destroyed?
F.N. Monjo
The late F. N. Monjo, author of The Drinking Gourd, wrote two other popular I Can Read Books: Indian Summer, illustrated by Anita Lobel, and The One Bad Thing About Father, illustrated by Rocco Negri.
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Reviews for The Drinking Gourd
40 ratings3 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I found this at the Wake Co. library's book sale. I'll have to see if I can find some more in this series for my nephew. It's a simple early-reader about the underground railroad.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5In F. N. Monjo's The Drinking Gourd, Tommy Fuller's misbehavior in church leads him to discover that his home is a stop on and his father is a conductor of the Underground Railroad. This short chapter book is divided into six chapters, each of which is capable of standing by itself thematically. Several chapters serve almost exclusively as a means of imparting historical information about the Underground Railroad to the reader, with the characters merely providing exposition. However, the first and fourth chapters provide surprisingly engaging story-telling. Tommy's fast-thinking and impish nature first land him in hot water and then help him sidetrack a search party. With more historical background given in the author's note, this book is an excellent educational resource with enough human interest to keep children engaged. It would be a good addition to grade school lbiraries, middle school libraries with a population of readers with low reading levels. It would not hurt a public library's collection either.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sometime during the first half of the 19th century, a little boy named Tommy meets a family of escaped slaves traveling on the Underground Railroad and helps them to escape a group of US Marshalls. This chapter book, published in 1970, tells an inspiring story of a troublemaking boy who redeems himself through a selfless act. The African-American slaves in the story, while depicted sympathetically, still suffer from the stereotypes of the time when the book was written. Referred to as “Negroes” in the story, they speak in a uneducated southern patois that today might be considered borderline racist. Tommy’s father, a noble abolitionist, introduces a moral quandary that many elementary school children might struggle to understand. “I believe in obeying the law,” he says, “but you and I broke the law tonight...I can’t obey that law... It’s wrong!” Monjo works up to this ethical question by painting a picture of an era much different from our own. Children sit in church for hours, segregated by sex and separated from their parents. Corporal punishment is accepted as part of daily life. To many kids this will be a completely unfamiliar world where the unnamed father's speech on human dignity is the only point of commonality with modern thought. The line-heavy illustrations are typical of the 70s but not ridiculously dated. Recommended for grades 3-5.