Elijah of Buxton
Christopher Paul Curtis
Language: English
Pages: 368
ISBN: 0439023459
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Eleven-year-old Elijah lives in Buxton, Canada, a settlement of runaway slaves near the American border. He's the first child in town to be born free, and he ought to be famous just for that. Unfortunately, all that most people see is a "fra-gile" boy who's scared of snakes and talks too much. But everything changes when a former slave steals money from Elijah's friend, who has been saving to buy his family out of captivity in the South. Now it's up to Elijah to track down the thief--and his dangerous journey just might make a hero out of him, if only he can find the courage to get back home.
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seen no one who’d killed a lion afore! I hadn’t never seen no one that’s ever seen a lion afore! When we got to the front of the line the Preacher put down two American dimes and we went into the tent. We sat on a row of benches right up near the front of the stage. On one end of the stage there were five bull’s-eye targets. Next to the targets was a big board that had a thick, dark green forest painted on it. You could tell it waren’t no forest from ’round here ’cause these woods had monkeys
squinting my eyes to look up at Ma and seeing her pull off her sunbonnet and wipe her forehead afore she squatted down next to me and said, “’Lijah, that ain’t nothing but a anthill, sweetheart.” I reached out to pick one of the ants up. This was afore I’d learnt that bugs have ways of discouraging you from touching ’em. But afore I could get hold of one, Ma grabbed my hand. “Uh-uh, ’Lijah, they’s some of God’s hardest workers and just ’cause you’s bigger don’t make it right to mess with ’em.”
axe the way you do.” Mr. Leroy said, “Zephariah, I caint wait. Maybe if you’d come with me I could go over to America, to Detroit, and talk to some people there. I know they got white folks what help with this.” Pa said, “Leroy, I don’t think …” The Preacher said, “Why, you know what? Now that you mention Michigan, I recall there’s this little logging village less than an hour outside of Detroit. It’s where the white man lives that helped Mrs. Lewis buy her husband down in South Carolina. I
the eye.” “Yes, ma’am. I won’t be long.” I waren’t gonna spend one minute thinking Mr. Leroy was gonna hurt no one. I knowed him better than that. That waren’t nothing but some more gossip and story pretty-upping. I figured I was gonna have ’bout a hour to eavesdrop on the meeting afore I had to get back to Cooter’s home. I walked toward the church but went into the woods so I could come at it from the back and no one could see me eavesdropping. It was peculiar to see the church all lit up from
to him one slow step at a time. Then I heard a humming sound so near to my left-hand side that my blanged legs and breathing frozed up all over again. Whatever it was that was making that sound was so close that even my eyeballs locked where they were at. I kept ’em straight ahead on the scarecrow-that-might-be-the- Preacher. Then, slow as maple sap on a cold day, I started sliding my eyes off to the left, off to the direction that the humming sound was coming from. The only thing I could make