No More!: Stories and Songs of Slave Resistance

Appropriate for a Civil War unit, this book contains dramatic pictures to accompany short stories, poems, and songs about slavery. Language learning through song can be effective.

I teach a unit about the music of the Underground Railroad in public schools. "No More" has been a strong addition to my library because of both the songs and the stories associated with the songs. Kids love to hear stories and that makes my teaching of the music quite a bit easier and meaningful.

I would recommend this book to someone who is into slave kind of things because the book is about slavery. This book has different kind of stories about slavery that the reader will enjoy. All of the stories are about slavery. There are also songs about slavery that they sang.This is a true book. Again, I would recommend this to someone who's into slavery.

As author, Doreen Rappaport tells the reader in the forward to this amazing book: "In No More! I have attempted to trace the courageous struggle waged by enslaved Africans from the time they boarded the first slave ships heading for the New World to emancipation with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment." Ms Rappaport has compiled slave narratives and folktales, poetry, black spirituals, and biographies in this unique and engaging collection, to tell the brutal and humiliating history of slavery. Here are the stories of eleven extraordinary people, from the well know Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and Booker T. Washington, to Suzie King Taylor who learned to read and write in a secret school and helped forge documents, and John Scobell, a runaway slave who spied for the Union Army. These are stories of resistance, rebellion, triumph and courage that inspire with their power. Ms Rappaports moving and dramatic text draws the reader in and transports you back in time on a historical journey from Africa, to the Middle Passage, the hard life on the plantation, and the taste of freedom on the Underground Railroad, to the Civil War and finally emancipation. Shane Evans bold and powerfully evocative oil paintings capture the emotions of pain, determination, hope, fear, and dignity in each beautiful portrait. Together, word and art put a very human face on the ugliness and inhumanity of slavery. No More! should be "must" reading for all children 10 and older. "On December 18, 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery in all states and territories, became the law of the reunited land. Black men, women, and children set out to meet their next challenge - freedom."