Freedom Train

In this book, author Evelyn Coleman tells the story of Clyde Thomason, a boy growing up in a poor white community near Atlanta in the 1940s. Although Clyde is excited that the Freedom Train (a train carrying important documents, such as the Bill of Rights) is coming to Atlanta, he is nervous about having to recite the Freedom Pledge in front of hundreds of people upon the train’s arrival. Finding himself both a target of the class bully as well as a friend of a discriminated-against African American boy in his town, Clyde also learns important lessons throughout the book about injustice and the true meaning of freedom.

This book is fast-paced and full of action. It has short chapters and one simple representative illustration at the show more beginning of each chapter. At the end of the book, the author has included a historical note about the real Freedom Train of the 1940s, the historical licenses she embraced in writing the story, her inspirations in writing it, and three historical photographs of the Freedom Train. This book is recommended for school and public libraries because of the historical picture of the 1940s South that it presents, as well as the important lessons within it. show less