Pappas, Constantine

October 30, 2016

English, Period 4

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry

Author: Mildred D. Taylor

Genre: Historical Fiction

276 pages

Newberry Award Winner

The novel, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, by Mildred D. Taylor is about an African American family named the Logans who lived in Mississippi during the Great Depression. The Logans, consisting of the four children, Stacey the eldest, Cassie the only daughter, Christopher-John and Clayton Chester (who goes by Little Man), Mama and the father,  and Big Ma their grandmother. The family all lived on a large 400 acre farm where they grow cotton. The children walk an hour each day to the all black school where their mother taught. On their route to school every day a bus full of white students passes them sometimes splashing mud onto the children, for the white kids’ amusement. The school the children attended was not as nice as the all white schools, they didn’t have buses and their “new” books from the school board were just raggedy used books that the white schools were done with. A little while later, Cassie, Stacey, and their friend T.J. go with Big Ma to the flea market in a nearby city where the boys eye a gun that they are interested in. When inside one of the shops the owner helps the white customers before them, this upsets Cassie and she confronts the shop owner which angers him and he starts calling Cassie the N-word and kicks her out of the store. While walking back to their wagon Cassie bumps into a white girl. The white girl gets very upset by this and her father pushes Cassie on the ground and demands she refer to his daughter as Ms. At the children’s school the school board hears Mama is teaching something that is different from what is in the book and is fired.  T.J. makes friends with two white boys who have him steal the gun with them and then almost kill him. Since the boys were not caught a group of white men including the boys attack T.J. and want to kill him. While this is going on the Logans cotton field caught on fire. Luckily the fire was put out before all the cotton burned but T.J. was put in jail where he will most likely be put to death.

I enjoyed this novel. I felt it was told very well and was strung together perfectly. I enjoyed how it slowly transitioned throughout an entire year without any large plot holes. What I wasn’t a big fan of was the amount characters in the book. The problem with this was an insignificant character would be mentioned in the beginning of the book and be brought up again at the end. It was hard to remember all of these characters since most were forgettable. I also was not fond of the lack of character development even with the main characters such as Cassie. I liked the ending of the story but I felt it ended right on the climax of the story with only a sentence or so to be the falling action. I would though recommend this book to other readers since it was very interesting and suspenseful.