Maggie's Amerikay - Hardcover

Russell, Barbara Timberlake

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374347220 ISBN 13: 9780374347222

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR), 2006

Synopsis

“In Amerikay,” Maggie’s da has told her, “we will start anew.”
It’s 1898, and Maggie McCrary and her family have just crossed the ocean to settle in New Orleans. America is the answer to her father’s dream of books and proper learning. For her
mother, it offers the chance to buy land. But living in a crowded tenement watching her neighbors work hard all day, Maggie isn’t sure she likes Amerikay. Then Maggie discovers kinship in Nathan, an African American boy, and hope in the ragtime music he plays – music that seems to shout: Free! Free! I choose who I will be!
Striking illustrations pull readers into the rich mix of people that make up New Orleans in the 1890s and into the story of one young girl’s quest to find her own place in America.

Maggie's Amerikay is a 2007 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.

About this title

About the Author:

BARBARA TIMBERLAKE RUSSELL's The Remembering Stone
was a commended title for the Americas Award. She lives in
Atlanta, Georgia. JIM BURKE's many illustration awards include
a Gold Medal from the Society of Illustrators. He lives in
Brooklyn, New York.

From School Library Journal:

Grade 2-5-The year is 1898, and Maggie McCrary has recently moved from Ireland to New Orleans, where her father hopes to one day buy land. To this end, he spends his days walking the streets with his pushcart. He befriends a young Negro boy who yearns for the old cornet on the barrow. The kindhearted man, sensing a kindred spirit and true musician, gives the child the instrument. Meanwhile, Mam stays home, sewing piecework to make ends meet. When the baby gets yellow fever, Maggie is determined to help out, even though her father disapproves of her working. At first, she rolls cigars after school for 50 cents a week. Then, Nathan tells her of a job as a scribe for Daddy Clements, an old man who tells her stories about being taken from Africa to America, fighting in the Civil War, and his people's fight for freedom. Maggie listens and learns, but also teaches him that her people had similar struggles. Rich with experience, accomplishment, independence, and two dollars, the solemn girl finally claps and dances to Nathan's cornet and his band of ragtime musicians. Burke's realistic paintings are dark with a muted palette, capturing the period as well as the characters' sentiments. This handsome picture book reveals the plight of immigrants at the turn of the century while paying tribute to the city where jazz was born.-Barbara Auerbach, New York City Public Schools
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About this edition

• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0374347220
• ISBN 13: 9780374347222
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 40
• Illustrator: Burke Jim