Freedom Train

The Story of Harriet Tubman - Freedom Train
By Dorothy Sterling
ISBN: 978-0-590-43628-1
Pages:191

The story of Harriet Tubman, from a small girl to the day she passes away.  This story is full of historical information.  Harriet, a young slave, was considered trouble from the start.  Little did anyone know what an influence she would become as a woman.  Harriet runs away and uses the slave railway, until she makes it to freedom.  Upon her freedom she is unable to leave the other thousands of slaves behind so she goes back, again and again, to help free rest.  This she continues until slaves are finally allowed their freedom.  She then helps with the war against slavery and equal rights for the Negro people.  All the places she travelled are mentioned and the names of the people she fought along side.  This book is by far better than a history text book.

My daughter read this book alone and really enjoyed it.  My son, I had him read it aloud to me.  I am pleased I had him read it to me as many of the town names were difficult, considering he is not from her part of the world.  I felt the misreading of these towns would have been an injustice to the books information.  There was also a lot of names which required sounding and correction on the behalf of my young reader.  The names were not difficult.  It was the speed of which my young reader scanned the words which made the pronunciation incorrect.  If he had read this alone he would have given many people and towns different names, as he scanned rather than sounded the words. 

I would recommend this book as a read aloud or for 9 years up (depending on the readers ability to read/sound words rather than scan read)

Thinking of the issue of sounding words... 
I believe it is of importance to have our children read aloud on a regular basis. There are many studies that agree with this.  It is very easy to disregard the reading of your child once we think they can read well.  I notice, very often, that even very good readers read words incorrectly.  The word makes sense, where it is said in the text, but it is not the correct word.  This often changes the whole meaning of the sentence and sometimes even the storyline.  To the child this goes unnoticed (to mine anyway).  This is why I have my younger child read chapter books out loud to me.  It is easy to think that once a child can read easy books to you, they will read the harder books to themselves correctly.  I am noticing that this is not always the case and the excitement of the storyline is changed.

I hope you all enjoy reading the Freedom Train it is amazing what these people went through.



The story of Harriet Tubman - Freedom Train was available from: Book depository and amazon

http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/Freedom-Train-Dorothy-Sterling/9780590436281

http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/search?searchTerm=freedom+train&search=Find+book

http://www.amazon.com/Freedom-Train-Story-Harriet-Tubman/dp/0590436287/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1396655121&sr=8-1&keywords=freedom+train