Orchard Books, 1992.

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Summary: Two thirteen-year-old girls, one black, one white, stole away from their home and slavery in the spring of 1855. Forty-one years later they share their journey with two other thirteen-year-old girls.

Level: RL: 5 - 8 IL: 5 - 8

Themes:

slavery
Underground Railroad
role of women/girls in the 1850's

Activities:

1. Go to the library (school or public), find an historical atlas and locate a map of the United States circa 1855. (Maps on File would be another place to look.) Make a map and identify the slave states.

2. Using the maps and an historical atlas, trace Susannah's route from Bennington, VT to Port Royal, VA. Susannah states it took her 3 days. Using the map legend, calculate and figure each day's mileage. Remember, she went by train; find the symbol for "railroad" and calculate along the railroad lines. Calculate the route from Bennington, VT to Port Royal, VA. using today's railway system, and figure out the amount of time it would take. Identify this route with a colored marker and create your own map legend.

3. Using the map from activity 1, trace Bethleham's and Susannah's route North. From the book and the map, can you calculate the distance and time it took them to the point where they separate? Identify this route with a different colored marker and enter this information into your legend.

4. Try to find other maps of established Underground Railroad routes. Enter one or two of these routes onto your map and legend.

5. Bethleham and Susannah were fortunate to stumble onto the Underground Railroad. Using the card catalog, find other books on the Underground Railroad (both fiction and non-fiction). Use a computer and a database program to create your own bibliography with authors and titles.

6. Read another Civil War historical fiction book in which the Underground Railroad is used by the characters. Using the map above, chart their progress and compare it with Bethleham's and Susannah's.

7. The title Steal Away comes from an old Negro Spiritual. Go to your library and get several books of spirituals. (If none are available, ask your librarian to order some through interlibrary loan.) Use forwards, introductions, and texts to find information about Negro Spirituals and learn how some were used as codes to slaves and members of the Underground Railroad. See if you can find any songs that you think may refer to the Underground Railroad, slavery, or escaping. Check the database you've created in activity 5. How many titles of spirituals have been used as titles of Civil War historical fiction? Add another field to your database and enter the titles of these spirituals.

8. Several references were made to differences in the lives of slaves in the northern part of the South vs. the lives of slaves in the southern part of the South. Identify the two types of states on your map. Using the library, find books on slavery. Record facts about the lives of slaves from the northern and southern parts of the South. Make a chart to compare the similarities and differences.

9. Bethleham and Susannah had to disguise themselves as boys to successfully steal away. One reason was that boys had considerably more freedom than girls. Why do you think that was? Find specific references in the book that describe the expectation of girls and boys. Make a compare and contrast chart to record the differences. Read another book (The Last Silk Dress, for example) in which a girl disguises herself in order to go out unaccompanied. Compare her experiences with those of Bethleham's and Susannah's.

10. Go to your library, find non-fiction books about women in the Civil War. How do their real life experiences compare with the fictional characters' experiences? Compare lives of women in the 1980's with the lives of women today.

11. Free and Mary listened to and recorded Bethleham and Susannah's telling of their flight north. This is called "oral history." Approach an older person in you life (grandparents, elderly friends) and ask them to share experiences they had when they were thirteen. Audio or video tape your session and share it with your class. (See activity 2c of A Twilight Struggle in this Maine Sampler for another possible approach to this project.

Resources:

Underground Railroad/Slavery

Clark, Margaret Goff. Freedom Crossing. Scholastic, 1980.

Forman, L James. Song of Jubilee. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971.

Kristof, Jane. Steal Away Home. Bobbs-Merrill, 1969.

Meltzer, Milton. Underground Man. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1990.

Monjo, F. The Drinking Gourd. Harper and Row, 1970.

Rappaport, Doreen. Escape from Slavery: Five Journeys to Freedom. Harper Collins, 1991.

Winter, Jeanette. Follow the Drinking Gourd. Knopf, 1988.

Women/Girls in the Civil War

Beatty, Batricia. Be Ever Hopeful, Hannalee. Morrow, 1988.

Chang, Ina. A Separate Battle: Women and the Civil War. Lodestar, 1991.

Havighurst, Marion Boyd. The Sycamore Tree. World Publishing, 1960.

Rilnaldi, Ann. The Last Silk Dress. Holdlay, 1988.

Shore, Laura Jan. The Sacred Moon Tree. Bradbury, 1986.

Sprituals

Boni, Margaret Bradford, comp. Fireside Book of Folk Songs. Simon & Schuster, 1947.

Bryan, Ashley, comp. All Night, All Day: A Child's First Book of African- American Spirituals. Atheneum, 1991.

Langstaff, J. Ed. and Sel. Climbing Jacob's Ladder: Heroes of the Bible in African-American Spirituals. Ill. by Ashley Bryan. McElderberry Books, 1991.

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Prepared by Priscilla Soucie

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