- Title: Freedom Over Me
- Author(s): Ashley Bryan
- Illustrator/Photographer: Ashley Bryan
- Publisher and Year: Simon & Schuster, 2016
- Number of pages: 46
- Tags: Culture, Family, Emotion, 4-5, 6-8, Picture Book, Morgan Houk, Award Book
- Genre: Historical Fiction
- Analysis:
This book is about eleven slaves who were real people working on a real plantation. These slaves were sold at an auction when 
the plantation’s properties were being sold. The author of this book found the document that had short descriptions of each of the slaves as well as how much they were being sold for. The book is compiled of poems written by Ashley Bryan from the perspective of the slaves. The poems shed light on the thoughts and experiences of the slaves and bring out the multi-faceted human during an inhumane time in history.
The text certainly acts as a window into the perceived lives and despicable reality of these eleven slaves. The reader is able to see that these people were just like us with hopes and dreams of becoming artists, musicians and doctors. The reader is also abl
e to see how these dreams were stripped from them and how they were viewed more as property than as human beings. The buyers and sellers of these slaves are never pictured in the story but the fear and hopelessness that many of the poems encompass portray the powerlessness of the people enslaved and the ultimate power of the slave owners.
The images are structured in a way that show a close up portrait of each slave accompanied by their poem. The images are painted fairly abstractly with a lot of quick lines drawn through the skin of the people. I think that the illustrator may have painted the slaves in this way to show the crippling exhaustion and stress that they endured. The portraits are also outlined with thick, black lines which make the slaves almost pop out of the page. I think the illustrator may have done this to show that even though these people were greatly oppressed and mistreated, they still fought for their freedom (many of them escaping the plantation) and slavery was ultimately abolished. This idea also goes back to the title of the book, Freedom Over Me, which provides a glimmering sense of hope in this dark time of our nation’s history.