**Winner of a Caldecott Honor and a Coretta Scott King Illustrator
Honor
A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2016
A School Library Journal Best Book of 2016: Nonfiction
Starred reviews from School Library Journal, Booklist, Kirkus
Reviews, and The Horn Book Magazine
A Junior Library Guild Selection
This poetic, nonfiction story about a little-known piece of African
American history captures a human's capacity to find hope and joy in
difficult circumstances and demonstrates how New Orleans' Congo Square
was truly freedom's heart.**
Mondays, there were hogs to slop,
mules to train, and logs to chop.
Slavery was no ways fair.
Six more days to Congo Square.
As slaves relentlessly toiled in an unjust system in 19th century
Louisiana, they all counted down the days until Sunday, when at least
for half a day they were briefly able to congregate in Congo Square in
New Orleans. Here they were free to set up an open market, sing, dance,
and play music. They were free to forget their cares, their struggles,
and their oppression. This story chronicles slaves' duties each day,
from chopping logs on Mondays to baking bread on Wednesdays to plucking
hens on Saturday, and builds to the freedom of Sundays and the special
experience of an afternoon spent in Congo Square. This book includes a
forward from Freddi Williams Evans (freddievans.com), a historian and
Congo Square expert, as well as a glossary of terms with pronunciations
and definitions.
