Shatter with Words

MultiCultural Review

By means of two fictional California teenagers, Aleesa and Kenneth, who travel through time, Sorenson presents the lives of major figures in American history. In Fight in the Fields, Aleesa and Kenneth are assigned to weed for school detention. They drink water from the school's jug and find themselves as migrant workers just before a strike in the 1960s. They learn of the poor conditions the farmworkers faced and confront the harsh tactics of the growers and police. In Shatter with Words, the two are struck by falling books at the library and end up in Harlem in 1931. They meet the poet, and are awed by his words, and follow him to a reading at the all-white University of North Carolina, where they experience the racism of the Jim Crow South. Each fictional adventure concludes with a brief factual biography of the subject.
—December 1998