Addy Learns a Lesson

Addy is the young girl who escaped from slavery in the South with her mother. Now she's living in Philadelphia and has a chance to go to school, something which was prohibited black people in the South of the time.

She makes a friend of another black girl, Sarah, then thinks she makes a friend of another black girl, Harriet. (Addy when to an all-black school.) Harriet's not the type of person that Addy thinks she is, though, and she has to learn a lesson about how people behavior and just who a friend is.

Addy also helps to teach her mother how to read.

As always, there's a historical section in the book which helps put the events into more perspective. The most important part to remember, of course, is how the blacks in the South were denied an education on purpose (the Masters didn't want them to learn how to read and possibly escape). Even today in some parts of the world girls are not allowed to get an education in order to keep them ignorant on purpose. Although an education does not guarantee you a good life, it definitely helps.

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