Run Away Home
by Patricia C. Mckissack
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Description
In 1886 in Alabama, an eleven-year-old African American girl and her family befriend and give refuge to a runaway Apache boy.Tags
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This story is inspired by the author's family heritage and stories she discovered from her past. It is a historical fiction story about a young girl named Sarah Jane, and how she witnessed the escape of an Apache boy as he jumped off a train headed for an Indian reservation and a life he doesn't want. Sarah Jane hopes he will run far away because people deserve to be free. However, she finds him hiding in her barn, dying of swamp fever. Sarah Jane and her mother work hard to nurse the boy back to life, but then Sarah Jane realizes they will have to turn him over to the authorities. How can a family who recently received their own freedom turn over a boy who simply wants his own freedom?
Jealousy is the lesson in this book for me. I remember when I was a child I would get so upset when my mom or dad would give another child attention other than myself. There comes a point in life when you realize that sharing things that make you happy can help someone else. I think it's touching that Sarah learns to accept the Indian boy because she cares about him too, everyone needs a friend sometimes.
fair - Michael
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Author Information
152+ Works 26,651 Members
Patricia C. McKissack was born in Smyrna, Tennessee on August 9, 1944. She received a bachelor's degree in English from Tennessee State University in 1964 and a master's degree in early childhood literature and media programming from Webster University in 1975. After college, she worked as a junior high school English teacher and a children's book show more editor at Concordia Publishing. Since the 1980's, she and her husband Frederick L. McKissack have written over 100 books together. Most of their titles are biographies with a strong focus on African-American themes for young readers. Their early 1990s biography series, Great African Americans included volumes on Frederick Douglass, Marian Anderson, and Paul Robeson. Their other works included Black Hands, White Sails: The Story of African-American Whalers and Days of Jubilee: The End of Slavery in the United States. Over their 30 years of writing together, the couple won many awards including the C.S. Lewis Silver Medal, a Newbery Honor, nine Coretta Scott King Author and Honor awards, the Jane Addams Peace Award, and the NAACP Image Award for Sojourner Truth: Ain't I a Woman?. In 1998, they received the Coretta Scott King-Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement. She also writes fiction on her own. Her book included Flossie and the Fox, Stitchin' and Pullin': A Gee's Bend Quilt, A Friendship for Today, and Let's Clap, Jump, Sing and Shout; Dance, Spin and Turn It Out! She won the Newberry Honor Book Award and the King Author Award for The Dark Thirty: Southern Tales of the Supernatural in 1993 and the Caldecott Medal for Mirandy and Brother Wind. She dead of cardio-respiratory arrest on April 7, 2017 at the age of 72. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Awards and Honors
Awards
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Run Away Home
- Original publication date
- 1997
- People/Characters
- Sarah Jane
- Dedication
- Remembering Abraham Crossley, the Sky in our family, and Thanking Nan and Peter for listening to me read this story
- First words
- I walked behind Papa, listening to the dark, listening to the familiar sounds of the Alabama piney woods.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)"That makes him perfect, then," I said. "Just perfect."
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 624
- Popularity
- 46,480
- Reviews
- 3
- Rating
- (3.42)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 7
- ASINs
- 4
