GOOD NEWS: The Newberry Medal for the most distinguished U.S. children's book published last year went to Amina Luqman-Dawson's "Freewater."
The book, which also won the Coretta Scott King Author award, is a historical novel about two enslaved siblings who escape from a plantation and end up in a swamp community of free slaves called Freewater.
- "Freewater" is based on the real-life Great Dismal Swamp Maroons, a place in North Carolina and Virginia where escaped slaves lived freely between approximately 1700 and the 1860s.
- Luqman-Dawson said that the idea for the book came to her nearly 20 years ago.
- She said that she uses magical realism to take her young readers "to a new place where they can kind of hear the voices of ... these people that have found freedom in the middle of enslavement."
- The other Newberry award finalists were "Iveliz Explains It All," "The Last Mapmaker," and "Maizy Chen's Last Chance."
