I wouldn't say it's sanitized he gets into the fugitive slave laws, and punishments including hobbling. Hale is able to do this in a way that honors the pain and condemns the horrors of slavery, but is still appropriate for the target audience of 5th - 8th graders. Her story gives us a good look at what the institution of slavery was like in the south at the time.in a word, terrible. Back then she was "Araminta Ross," and she keeps that name for the half of the book before she escapes to freedom. Hale (the author) does a good job of laying out the history of slavery quickly getting us up to the 1830s, when Harriet Tubman was a young girl. At the beginning of this story, the Provost (stuffy, very British) says essentially "all of these stories are about how America is so great, so special, the best country ever." which Hale admits to, but does say that the country has made many mistakes, and that slavery is one of the worst.
As he's about to die, he's able to magically see all of American History, and entertains the Hangman and Provost with the tales, Sheherazade-style. The format is the same as the other books in this series: American patriot/spy Nathan Hale is at the gallows, about to be executed by a Hangman and British Provost. In this case, slavery and the abolitionist movement in the antebellum South. It's a break in the formula that Hale has established, but is still able to use one woman's story as an exemplar of what's happening in the wider story of American History. "The Underground Abductor" is the story of Harriet Tubman, and is the first in the series that's a biography of a single person. Having tackled subjects like the Revolutionary War, Civil War, the Donner Party, and World War I, he's gone back to the 19th Century for his fifth book, "The Underground Abductor." The audience is coming because the books are good. Happily, one of the current hits among history-based-graphic-novels-for-middle-grades is "Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales." The series is written by to-me local guy Nathan Hale, and he's finding a wider audience than you'd expect for such a narrow piece of the market. That doesn't always happen, which makes me hesitate to put all my lovin' into one particular franchise.
It's great when book series I love are doing well.
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