Hilary's Reviews > Nightjohn

This is one of those books where you think, "Why is this marketed to children?" and have to remind yourself that if children suffered through it, others can learn about it.

Twelve-year old Sarny is a slave, and the white man who owns her and the others is callous and brutal. Paulsen doesn't gloss over anything, whether separation of families, the use of "breeders" or the casual whippings and maltreatment that was handed out at the time. He packs a lot into those 112 pages as Sarny begins the most forbidden thing of all: she starts learning to read.