Fredrick Douglass, by Mona Kerby

Written with dramatic immediacy, this illustrated biography in the fine First Books series brings to a middle-grade audience a strong sense of the great abolitionist and writer. This can't replace Michael McCurdy's illustrated Escape from Slavery: The Boyhood of Frederick Douglass (1994), which contains selections from Douglass' first autobiography. But Kerby describes not only Douglass' youth in bondage and his exciting escape, but also how he eventually bore witness against slavery as writer and speaker. She mentions that he made mistakes and that some of his solutions to civil rights issues were controversial. The design is attractive, and the pictures are well chosen, though an occasional caption sounds like a study question. As a slave, Douglass secretly learned to read, and the power of literacy underlies this biography: Kerby shows how, in writing his story, Douglass affected the lives of untold numbers of Americans.