When Harriet Met Sojourner

Two women with similar backgrounds. Both slaves; both fiercely independent. Both great, in different ways.

Harriet Tubman: brave pioneer who led her fellow slaves to freedom, larger than life . . . yearning to be free.

Sojourner Truth: strong woman who spoke up for African American rights, tall as a tree . . . yearning to be free.

One day in 1864, the lives of these two women came together. When Harriet Met Sojourner is a portrait of these two remarkable women, from their inauspicious beginnings to their pivotal roles in the battle for America's future.

Publishers Weekly

Although the title raises different expectations, Clinton and Evans (previously paired for Hold the Flag High) deliver gripping parallel portraits of Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth, two remarkable women born into slavery whose paths cross here only on the final pages, in a meeting about which the author can do no more than speculate. Alternating between the two subjects, Clinton underscores their courage, perseverance and passion as each obtains her individual freedom and then campaigns against slavery. A personal tone and specific facts bring home the experience of slavery for the target audience without diluting too much of the horror but also without introducing concepts beyond their grasp: "Araminta's [Harriet Tubman's] parents loved and cherished their sons and daughters but could not protect them.... Two of her sisters were snatched away, stolen off and sold South-they were gone but never forgotten." As Harriet Tubman sews a quilt, Clinton notes, "like the quilt she worked on, one square at a time, she pieced together her plans for running off to the North." Evans builds on this motif, re-creating the appearance of stitches alongside his mixed-media compositions so that they look basted onto the background, itself resembling a collection of light-colored quilt squares and quilt tops. Some illustrations incorporate fabric scraps, subtly reinforcing the ideas that each woman assembled her own future, and that history can be made from the meeting, or joining together, of influential and inspiring people. Ages 5-7. (Nov.)

Catherine Clinton is the author of Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom and Fanny Kemble's Civil Wars. Educated at Harvard, Sussex, and Princeton, she is a member of the advisory committee to the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, and holds a chair in U.S. history at Queen's University Belfast.