Copper Sun
Sharon Draper

Very good! It's the story of Amari, stolen from her village in Africa to sail on a slave ship to South Carolina Colony, where she is sold to a very cruel son of a plantation owner. She is raped repeatedly and witnesses horrific things (three in particular are pretty hard to read - the massacre of her village, the use of a four-year-old as "gator bait" and the shooting of a newborn) but never gives up hope. Even though she longs for death at times, there is something that keeps her going. It has a good ending and there is some great little-known historical information given after to help explain the ending.

Sharon Draper explains that she is indeed the granddaughter of a former slave. Her grandfather, who was 64 when her father was born, was born a slave and freed by the Emancipation Proclamation when he was 5. Amari is fictional but Sharon Draper visited sites in Africa and needed to write the story of a girl she imagined going through those things.

This is definitely safe for 7-12 as the ideas are horrific but the language is not. The terrible scenes are described enough to give the imagination something to work with, but are not gratuitous or overly graphic. For instance, her rapes are never described in detail, rather things like "he used her" or "he made her do things that made her feel ashamed". Even when the baby is shot, it simply states something to the effect of "the baby cried no more." (I lent my copy to a teacher so I'm going on memory.) Elementary teachers, use caution, if you go for it, limit checkout to grades 5 or older, and even then with discretion.

It's a fairly easy read - Draper just tends to flow - and I read it in a few hours. This will touch kids' hearts as well as give them a great lesson about the realities of slavery.