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Abraham Lincoln: Letters from a Slave Girl
Written by Andrea Davis Pinkney
Booklist,
9/1/2001
"In the third volume in the Dear Mr. President series, Pinkney creates a lively, two-year correspondence between Abraham Lincoln and Lettie Tucker, a 12-year-old slave living on a plantation in South Carolina. Lettie respectfully challenges Lincoln, and as she writes about her life and family. Lincoln's genial, concerned responses depict both his determination to preserve the Union and his conflicted, gradually changing views about abolition. Lettie emerges as engaging, determined, and empathetic, whether chiding or comforting Lincoln, grieving when her father is sold, or rejoicing because of the Emancipation Proclamation and her family's new life in Philadelphia. The letters are beautifully written and accompanied by numerous photographs… the premise is interesting, the research connections useful, and the letters thought provoking."
Civil War Book Review,
6/1/2001
“Readers of a certain age will find this latest contribution to the Dear Mr. President series an engaging addition. In Abraham Lincoln: Letters from a Slave Girl, a president who was well-known for his empathy with children, corresponds, fictitiously, with a feisty, self-educated, 12-year-old slave girl living on the ‘Tucker Plantation' near Charleston, South Carolina, during the first two years of the Civil War. . . . The letters between Lettie and Abraham Lincoln cover a variety of topics that accomplish the series' purpose of conveying to younger readers what it was like to live during a tumultuous period in United States history. . . . Slavery's brutality is not sanitized as young readers learn of the scars on her father's back, the meagerness of a slave life in which a dahlia bulb becomes a source of inspiration, and the broken promise of Lettie's owner who, despite his commitment to never break up her family, sells her father at an auction.
. . . readers will absorb from this work a realistic sense of slavery, Lincoln, and the Civil War.”
School Library Journal,
9/1/2001
"This series title presents fictionalized letters between a 12-year-old slave girl living on a South Carolina plantation and President Lincoln, from 1861 to 1863. She describes her life and her family's circumstances and challenges the president on his position toward slavery, urging him to free the slaves. Lincoln describes his life…the progress of the war, and his evolving position regarding slavery, culminating in the Emancipation Proclamation. The book includes photos, paintings, engravings, prints, reproductions, and a description of the U.S. postal service. The title raises interesting issues about slavery that are relevant to present-day discussions on race relations. It will be useful for supplementary reading for school curricula."
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