megram - Index

megram - 55NovOttawa - Index

Elijah of Buxton
By Christopher Paul Curtis
(Scholastic, $19.99)
“How could one side of the river mean you were free and the
other side mean you were a slave?” Eleven-year-old Elijah, most
appealing of heroes, is famous for being the first child born free in
the settlement of Buxton,close to the Michigan border.He is brave,
bright, mischievous and “fra-gile.”Through his innocent wise eyes,
we see the warmth and cohesion of the community that has
escaped from, but not forgotten, slavery. By turns funny and heartbreaking,
this brilliant novel deservedly won the 2008 Canadian
Library Association Book of the Year Award.Curtis grew up in Flint,
Michigan, and spent 13 years hanging car doors at an auto plant,
“which left him with a lifelong aversion to getting in and out of
large automobiles.” He then attended university and started to
write.
Mary Alice Downie’s Alison’s Ghosts (co-written with John
Downie for middle readers) has just been published in a revised
edition.
November/December 2008 • 29 • Fifty-Five Plus Magazine