Up Before Daybreak: Cotton and People in America: Cotton and People in America

Like the author's nonfiction book, Shutting out the Sky, Up Before Daybreak makes history come alive by focusing on the lives of real people. Hopkinson does not talk down to young readers -- instead, she encourages them to look at the past in ways that reach beyond a history textbook. If nothing else, the photos in this beautiful book are a reminder of why it is important that all of us make an effort to understand the past.

A slave named Henry Kirk Miller was fourteen when freedom arrived with the end of the Civil War. Later he recalled how his former owner had needed money and had sold off one of Henry's sisters, taking cotton in exchange: " 'I remember hearing them tell about the big price she brought because cotton was so high,' said Henry. 'Old mistress got 15 bales of cotton for sister...It was only a few days till freedom came and the man who had traded all them bales of cotton lost my sister, but old mistress kept the cotton.' " I'm in touch with cotton on a daily basis. As a matter of fact, what could be closer to me? Closer than my plaid flannel boxers ("100% COTTON, Made in Bangladesh")? Closer than my Beatles Yellow Submarine Picture Book tee-shirt ("100% COTTON, Knit in U.S.A, Assembled in Honduras")? Closer than my Levi Strauss Relaxed Fit 550 Jeans (100% COTTON, Made in Mexico)? Or the soft pillow case under my head as I read this fascinating book (100% COTTON, Made in Bulgaria)? Yup, I've got some significant daily connections to cotton. As noted by author Deborah Hopkinson, "Growing up, I never fully understood how important those old, run-down mills had been to our country's history. The evidence was right before my eyes, but I couldn't imagine the past. I couldn't see Lowell as a vibrant center of new technology or understand the forces that had left it broken and economically depressed." Like Hopkinson's experience with Lowell, Massachusetts, I also have a bit of experience with run-down mills. In the mid-Seventies, during my years as an undergraduate student at UConn, I would frequently head down the road to the nearby mill town of Willimantic, whose nickname "Thread City" has since been memorialized by the giant spools of thread upon which the Willimantic Frog Bridge frogs sit. (Check out the bridge at http://www.kurumi.com/roads/ct/br-frog.html.) My destination in Willimantic was Shaboo, a cavernous club serving up big-name live music that operated -- of course -- in an old textile factory building. As I learned through a bit of my own searching, the Willimantic Linen Company used to be Connecticut's largest employer. At one time they produced 85,000 miles of thread each day. Its modern-era successor, the American Thread Company, still had a presence in town during my collegiate days. And as I also discovered, another of the old buildings in Willimantic, which has recently been renovated as part of the development of a modern business and technology center, was the world's first mill to be illuminated by electric lights -- said to be Thomas Edison's first paying job! Whether it be factories, farms, or struggling families, Deborah Hopkinson has done an exceptional job here of researching the various threads of the history of cotton in America, and of pulling them together into an engaging story that, in turn, reveals so much about the broader history of our country. What makes the story most interesting is her ab