The Journey of Little Charlie

Little Charlie Bobo, twelve years old, has just lost his father to a terrible accident when Cap’n Buck, overseer at a nearby plantation, comes to call and tells Charlie and his mother that Charlie’s father owed Cap’n Buck a large debt, and it will be up to Charlie to work with Cap’n Buck to repay the debt. The two strike out on a journey North to recover property. It is well into the journey that Charlie realizes the property Cap’n Buck is searching far is actually people — escaped slaves from the plantation. When they have two of the three escaped slaves in custody, Charlie sees the humanity of slaves and realizes what a horror slavery really is.

Author Christopher Paul Curtis, a native of Canada, brings his country into a story about American slavery, a part of the record that is seldom mentioned yet quite fascinating. The difficulty with this middle-grade novel is that it is written in the first person with a very strong dialect, which is extremely disconcerting and hard to follow for young readers. The story is great and really quite important, but the dialect will put off all but the most dedicated of readers.