I remember reading Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry by Mildred D. Taylor when I was in Elementary School and loving it, so I had high expectations when starting to read it again. When I started reading, however, I had a lot of trouble getting into the story. I felt like it was taking a long time for the characters to develop enough for me to feel any connection to them.
It was interesting to me to hear about how these black children in Mississippi were being treated by the whites and what they felt about that. Cassie is the only girl of the four Logan siblings and she especially does not understand the way the blacks are treated. She does not understand why she has to call one of the white girls who is mistreating her "Miz Lillian Jean" or why she has to apologize for simply being on the sidewalk the white family intends to walk on. Then there's the Logan children's friend T.J. who tends to get in trouble but doesn't seem to know how to take blame. He still has a lot more growing up to do than the Logan children and wants to become friends with the white children. Throughout this book, the children learn even more of the truth about how they are seen by the white families and what the white families feel they should do about this including lynchings and burnings.
Though this book started out very slow for me, by the time I was done reading I found that I felt a strong connection to the characters. I enjoyed the contrast between Cassie's very naive personality and her older brother Stacey's more mature outlook on life. I can definitely see why this book won the Newberry Award and it is a book I would be sure to have in my classroom library.
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