Meet Addy

This is the first of six books in the American Girl series on Addy, a young black slave girl in the year 1864.

The main people in Addy's family are her father, her mother, Sam, her brother, and Esther, her baby sister. They work on a slave plantation owned by Master Stevens. Her brother had tried to escape the year before but was tracked down by dogs, tied to a tree and then was whipped by Master Stevens.

Plans are laid for their escape north along the Underground Railroad, but before that can happen Master Stevens sells her father and brother. Addy's mother tells her that they will still try for their freedom, but their baby sister is going to have to be left behind.

Addy and her mother escape during the night and begin to make their way north, having to hide the day and try to avoid other, especially Confederate soldiers, at night. Addy even manages to save her mother's life during the trip. The book ends with Addy, her mother and a white woman helping them starting to make their way to freedom.

The story is well told. Although relatively short, it still gives a real good view of the closeness of the family members and the harshness of life on a Southern plantation during the Civil War. The last few pages in the book contain factual information on slavery and the Civil War, pointing out that the war was not started to free slaves but to keep the union together; the emphasis on ending slavery came later.

This is a good first book in the series about Addy. For those young people unfamilar with slavery, it gives a good, albeit brief, glance into the daily lives of slaves and just how harsh their existence could be.

The very idea that people in this country at one time felt it was their right to actually own other people and have virtually complete control over them is repulsive in the extreme. This was one of the darkest times in the history of this country, not just in the horror that the Civil War presented, but in the equal horror of slavery and just how so many people were so fervently convinced that it was totally right. This book does a good job taking a more personalized look at this time of shame and tragedy in our history.

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