Summary:
Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry is the story of a young black
girl, Cassie Logan, living in The South
during the great depression. She and her
siblings live on nearly 400 acres, which the family values deeply. The Logan children as well as other area
children attend Great Faith Elementary School, where the textbooks are in poor
condition and were previously used at the local white school. On the way to school, Cassie and her siblings
and friends hear about the burning of the three black men. Not long after the incident, Mr. Logan comes
home from his job and brings a friend, Mr. Morrison, with him to protect the
family. The kids learn that the owners
of a the local store, the Wallaces, are behind the lynchings and Mrs. Logan
organizes a boycott of the store and arranges for local black families to have
credit at store in the next town. This
angers the Wallace family and they seek revenge on the Logans. One night, Mr. Logan, Stacey (Cassie’s
brother) and Mr. Morrison are attacked by the Wallaces, and Mr. Wallace ensures
that Mrs. Logan is fired from her job at the Great Faith Elementary
School. One of Stacey’s friends (TJ) is
pressured into some bad decisions, including breaking into a store. During the break in, the Wallaces find out
about the break in and rush to catch TJ in the act. They are about to lynch him when a fire
breaks out and everyone rushes to stop it before it consumes the farmland. Eventually it is revealed that Mr. Logan set
the fire in an effort to stop the men from killing TJ. TJ is still blamed for the death of a white
man and will be put to trial for it. The
Logan’s are also worried about their land, because the fire got part of their
cotton crop.
APA Reference:
Taylor, M. (1976). Roll of thunder, hear my cry. New York:
Dial Press.
Impression:
This is not a book one reads and walks away feeling happy or
relieved. It deals with some heavy
issues, and presents some heavy consequences.
I immediately loved the protagonist Cassie Logan. With her telling the story, the reader is
able to look at situations and people with a child’s eyes. Not fully naïve, but not fully understanding
of the situations either. The book is
part of a series, but can stand alone.
However, it would be hard for someone to not seek the next book to find
out what happens to the family.
Professional Review:
“Possibly the
most heart-rending story I have ever read, Roll of Thunder brought tears of
both laughter and sorrow to my eyes. Growing up in Mississippi in the
prejudiced years of the 1900's Cassie is a tween black girl who is completely
innocent to the racism her mother and her father suffer everyday.
She goes to an
all-black school, where her mother is a prominent teacher and works and plays
happily back home, never dreaming how much harassment she will receive because
of her colour.
When she starts
to get heckled by the white children, riding by in their shiny bus while she
trudges to school splashing through mud and rain, Cassie decides to take a
stand. But she has yet to learn about the prejudice which ruled America in the
early 1900s.
I won't write any
more because I want you to read this book, and to understand how powerful it
really is.”
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred
D. Taylor - Review. (2011, October 11). Retrieved August 14, 2015, from
http://www.theguardian.com/childrens-books-site/2011/oct/28/roll-of-thunder-hear-my-cry-mildred-taylor-review
Library Use:
One obvious use is to use this during studies of
Civil Rights. I think this book could be
used to compare experiences during different time periods. One could pull passages from a variety of
“voices” from the depression and small groups could read from a variety of
books with the same setting. They could
then compare and contrast the experiences from different parts of the US.
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