January 31, 2022
A century after 1776, Rootilla Redgums (“older than... Georgia’s bright-red dirt”) and her “peculiar” nine-year-old grandson, Julius, turn racially segregated Georgia upside down. While Julius befriends a magical local duck called Woody, Rootilla teaches Walkerton’s Black residents to “weave rugs that never wore down” and “bake ceramic jugs that never emptied,” drawing interest from people in nearby white towns who previously refused to do business in Walkerton. But when some of those “Fearful” white residents react violently, “wearing white sheets and bearing blazing torches,” and Rootilla dies on her 100th birthday after facing them, young Julius takes action to carry her “back to where I was born.” He carves a post, soon etched with the word “Carrimebac” and the names of Walkerton’s people, and connects it to Woody, who carries Walkerton to “where from all of us come. Back home,” leaving a lake in its place. Holyfield’s (Hammering for Freedom) bold, painterly illustrations use skewed scale and perspective to add drama and motion to each spread, while Barclay Moore’s (The Stars Beneath Our Feet) realistic account of anti-Black racism is imbued reassuringly with the supernatural as a means of a Black community’s enduring and escaping oppression. Ages 6–9.