Elijah of Buxton

Written by Christopher Paul Curtis

Scholastic Press

9780439936477 

288 pp.

Ages 9-12

2007

Eleven-year-old Elijah Freeman is the first free child born in Buxton, Ontario, a town of slaves who have escaped from the United States.  His days are filled with fishing by throwing stones, going to school, staying away from snakes (of which he is deathly afraid) and continuing to run into the Preacher, a sweet-talking but manipulative man, who gets Elijah involved in more than one of his schemes. But when the Preacher steals all the hard-earned money that Mr. Leroy was saving to buy his wife and two children out of slavery, Elijah, a boy of innocence and a strong sense of fairness, finds himself heading across the border and into the world of slavers and those seeking freedom in Canada. His ma might call him "fra-gile" but Elijah proves that he is anything but.

Though Elijah of Buxton is a book of a harrowing journey into America by a black youth looking to right a wrong, it only becomes a perilous adventure in the last third of the book.  Christopher Paul Curtis takes time to set the stage for that venture, establishing his characters and cultural landscape through the complexity of voice and atmosphere.  Elijah's interactions with others in his community, both peers and those "growned-up," speak to the changing times, when racism could be overt or concealed and the divide between the United States and Canada was both conspicuous and subtle.

Elijah of Buxton begs to be read aloud to get the full nuance of language and tone that Christopher Paul Curtis instills in the narration and dialogue, just as he has in The Madman of Piney Woods and The Journey of Little Charlie.  The dialect can seem confusing at times but read aloud the text becomes rich and flavourful.

There are many difficult moments in Elijah of Buxton, times when my heart broke and I struggled to read on.  Not because the book wasn't an outstanding piece of literature but because of the injustices and horrors endured.   Mind you, even Christopher Paul Curtis's ending left me sobbing and still hopeful for a baby, for Elijah and for all. Christopher Paul Curtis had just set up the “most beautifullest, most perfectest” story he could.

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Though I rarely review books not published in the past year, my recent review of The Journey of Little Charlie compelled me to review Christopher Paul Curtis's earlier books that reference the town of Buxton, The Madman of Piney Woods and now Elijah of Buxton.  These books are not a series, though Buxton is mentioned in each.  Please read them all.

The Madman of Piney Woods

Written by Christopher Paul Curtis

Scholastic Canada

978-1-44313-912-9

363 pp.

Ages 8-12

2014

Though I don't often review books older than a year, I referred to this title several times in my review of The Journey of Little Charlie yesterday so that I thought it was incumbent upon me to share the importance of this volume now.  Fortunately, I must also address Christopher Paul Curtis' book  Elijah of Buxton (Scholastic, 2007) which first speaks to the historically important town of Buxton, originally a settlement of runaway slaves.

In 1859, eleven-year-old Elijah Freeman is the first free-born child in Buxton, Canada, a haven for slaves fleeing the American south.  In his story, Elijah of Buxton, Elijah uses his wits to find justice when money earmarked to buy a family's freedom is stolen.

In 1901, forty years after the story of Elijah of Buxton, the storylines of two unlikely friends, Benji and Red, converge in an unexpected manner to tell a new story for Buxton.  Benji Alston is a black boy living in Buxton whose shenanigans with his friends Spencer and  others become imagined newspaper stories.  Benji spends much of his time in the pine woods between Chatham and Buxton, and makes the acquaintance of a hermit-like man in the woods who, similar to Benji, is more comfortable in the woods than anywhere else.  Red is an Irish boy who lives with his father, a judge, and his highly prejudiced Grandmother O’Toole in Chatham.  Meanwhile Red and his friends talk of the Lion Man of the South Woods of whom they've learned they should avoid.

The two boys become friends after meeting at a speech competition.  When Red suspects that the Madman, whom he knows to be a friend of Benji’s, has been shot, the two become forever entwined with the mysterious man of the woods whose story began in Elijah of Buxton.

Told in alternating chapters in the voices of the two boys, The Madman of Piney Woods becomes an adventure story with a haunting mystery based in the past.  The horrors that a Black Canadian soldier endured because of the American Civil War or that an Irish immigrant escaping the devastation of the Potato Famine suffered before a tortuous journey on a coffin ship are as real as the memories of enslavement of many Buxton inhabitants.  Benji and Red may never have endured these horrors but these very different and yet surprisingly ordinary boys are defined by their friends and family. Still Christopher Paul Curtis contrives an authentic story by which the two come together to work together and make things right that have been wrong for too long. As I wrote yesterday in my review of The Journey of Little Charlie, from the ordinary comes the extraordinary.

History may take place in the past but The Madman of Piney Woods reminds us that the past engraves the present and the future for the survivors of war, slavery and all manner of disaster as well as for those who love them.