Martha and the Slave Catchers contains a great many other facts. For example, even though Liberty Falls, LaGrange, and Aramintaville are figments of my imagination, all the other places are real. (Araminta Ross, by the way, was Harriet Tubman’s original name.) Anti-slavery fairs were held each winter in several places as fund-raisers for the cause. Easily accessible online is The Anti-Slavery Alphabet, as well as other writings for abolitionist children. I introduce and explain other facts on my website: http://harrietalonso.com. Just go to the top of any page and click on Martha and the Slave Catchers.
Another thing I want to share with you is that I used language that was specific to the nineteenth century. Words like “plaits,” “vexed,” “conundrum,” and many others were used at the time. Even expressions like “knee high to a bumblebee” and “you are some pumpkins” date from then. But you can easily understand these from the context.
I also use the words “colored,” “Afric,” and “Afric American” to describe African Americans. These were respectful terms of the time.
Martha’s mother and Adam Burke use “Quaker Plain Speech” when they speak of “thee,” “thou,” “thy” and “thine.” By the time Martha’s story takes place, the use of these words was changing, and different groups of Quakers (or Friends as they were also called) used them in different ways. “Thee,” in particular, became the pronoun of choice for both the subject and object in a sentence. I fashioned my usage after the style of Harriet Beecher Stowe in her best-selling 1852 novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Let me give you an example of what I mean. In Chapter XIII, “The Quaker Settlement,” a Quaker woman says to the runaway slave Eliza, “And so thee still thinks of going to Canada, Eliza? . . . And what’ll thee do, when thee gets there? Thee must think about that, my daughter.” An adult’s ear may want her to use the “thou” form they are more familiar with from Shakespeare and other writers—“thou still thinkest” and “what will thou doest . . . ?” But Quaker Plain Speech of the nineteenth-century US says otherwise. Jessamyn West, a popular contemporary Quaker author, saw her best-selling novel, The Friendly Persuasion, published in 1945. She, too, uses this form of Quaker Plain Speech. The novel is still so popular that it was reissued in 2003.
You may wonder why neither Martha nor Jake use Quaker Plain Speech. Part of the reason is that their father, who is not a Quaker, does not use it. The other is that many Quaker abolitionist children spoke in modern English as they lived within a diverse community.
I hope that you enjoyed reading Martha and the Slave Catchers as much as I enjoyed writing it. I am sure you have heard the expression “It takes a village to raise a child.” Well, it also takes a lot of people to make a book. Although the story is mine, a number of people read it while I was writing it and made lots of good suggestions. I would like to thank them here.
First is my agent, Marie Brown of Marie Brown Associates. An agent is a person who finds a good publisher for her clients. But she does other things as well. Marie gave me good suggestions for improving the story and finding a publisher who would nourish it. I want to thank her from the bottom of my heart for her continued support and faith in Martha and Jake’s story. And I also thank Eugene Nesmith and Michele Wallace for helping me to contact Marie.
The publisher is, of course, Seven Stories Press, and its president is Dan Simon. Triangle Square Books for Young Readers, the imprint of the press that publishes children’s books, became Martha and Jake’s (and my) home. I want to thank Dan, as well as the director of Triangle Square, Ruth Weiner, Lauren Hooker, and the rest of the staff for their care in seeing that Martha and Jake’s story came to light. The dynamic illustrations that you see on the cover and in the pages of the book are the work of Elizabeth Zunon, and I thank her for bringing my imaginary people to life. The maps that help you to envision Martha’s trip south and her and Jake’s trip back north are the beautiful products of geographer Patricia Caro. I based these trips on the real-life journeys of two women who “stole” their freedom: Harriet Tubman and Ann Maria Weems. Finally, the curriculum guide designed to offer your teachers and parents some suggestions for sharing the book with you is thanks to Catherine Franklin, a wonderful professor of childhood education at the City College of New York.
Writers often take courses so they can learn from experts what makes a good story. I attended classes at the Gotham Writers Workshop and would like to thank my instructors, Michael Leviton and Margaret Meacham, for their helpful feedback on the early work I did. Maggie, in particular, stuck with the book through its completion and offered invaluable advice and support.
Writers often rely on other writers, colleagues, and friends to respond to their work. For me this included my writing group: Betsy Rorschak, Lizzie Ross, Laurin Grollin, Gail Gurland, and Joe Nagler, all accomplished writers. I also want to thank Deborah Anne McComb, Bonnie Anderson, Catherine Franklin, Mona Siegel, Anne Marie Pois, and Rebecca Johnson. And my youngest reader, Amelie Ingram, was a very special reader for me. A special thanks goes to the City College of New York history department for a small grant which allowed Lydia Shestopalova to conduct research in The Liberator.
Finally, family is very important to all of us. For me, this includes Victor Alonso, Miguel Alonso, Lucinda Alonso, Pablo Alonso, Lisa Koroleva, and Carolyn Beck. All read the story and discussed its plot and characters and got to know Martha and Jake almost as well as I did.
To all, I owe a great deal. But, mostly, for understanding Jake, I looked to my grandson, Joseph Alonso, to whom this book is dedicated.
HARRIET HYMAN ALONSO
To learn more about the facts behind the story, be sure to visit http://harrietalonso.com.
To reach the curriculum guide for this book, be sure to visit www.sevenstories.com.
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