In BOX: Henry Brown Mails Himself to Freedom, a picture book biography for older readers, Carole Boston Weatherford offers a heartbreaking personal look at the life of on enslaved man who decided that he had nothing to lose by attempting to mail himself to freedom after everyone he loved - his wife and children - were sold:

"What have I to fear?
My master broke every promise to me.
I lost my beloved wife and our dear children.
All, sold South. Neither my time nor my body is mine.
The breath of life is all I have to lose.
And bondage is suffocating me."

Henry was born to an enslaved mother in 1815 in Virginia and put to work as a young child, along with his seven sisters and brothers. By the time he was 33-years-old, he had been moved from the farm to a tobacco factory in Richmond. There, he met his wife Nancy and soon there were children. But Nancy and the children were sold over and over. Finally, Henry manages to struck a deal to try to get her back - if he would chip in $50. of the $650 asking price for Nancy, he was promised that she would not be sold again. But when Henry couldn't meet demands for more money, his family is taken to be sold.

With nothing left to lose, Henry paid a carpenter to build a box to mail himself to freedom with the help of trusted friends. And difficult and physically painful as the trip north was, he succeeded in arriving at the Philadelphia headquarters of the Anti-Slavery Society and freedom.

Using Henry Brown's 1851 Narrative of the Life of Henry Brown written by Himself as her guide, Boston Weatherford begins Henry's story with a concrete poem called "Geometry" in the shape of the number six, and asking the question: how many sides to a box? The answer, of course, is six sides and from then on, the number six dominates each page.

Each of the 48 poems are written in sixains, six line stanzas, here done in spare free verse poems with each poem replicating the six-sides of a box and with the boxes arranged on the pages like packing crates carelessly stacked one on top of the other and giving the reader a claustrophobic feeling of confinement and lack of freedom, whether referring to Henry's enslavement or to the confines of his box to freedom.

Boston has tight control over her poems and yet, there is a musicality that never gets lost - even in the few 1 line, 6 stanza poems she includes. Each of the poems creates it's own image: clear, affective, detailed, and each connects to the poem that comes before and after it to ultimately paint a complete picture of Henry's life as well as the events of the time, in which he lives, such as the Nat Turner revolt and his subsequent murder. And most importantly, the poems do not shy away from the inhuman brutality of enslavement.

Complimenting and continuing the theme of the six sides of a box are Michele Wood's boldly dynamic mixed media illustrations in a palette of blues, reds, pinks, greens and browns. Illustrations are often set against a background of six-sided quilt patterns.

Back matter includes a Time Line of Henry's life as well as important national events, a Bibliography, A Note from the Illustrator and A Note on Numbers and Language used.

You can download a useful Teacher's Guide courtesy of the publisher, Candlewick Press

This book is recommended for readers age 10+
This book was gratefully received from NetGalley

Told in brief poems, this nonfiction picture book explores a daring escape to freedom in the face of loss and brutality. Born in 1815, Henry Brown was born into slavery in Richmond, Virginia. He worked from the time he was a small child, passed from one generation of his owners to the next. Despite a series of promises by various owners, Henry Brown’s family is sold away from him multiple times, even when he paid money to keep them near. Hearing of the Underground Railroad, he decides to make a dangerous escape to the North, mailing himself in a wooden box.

Weatherford builds box after box in her poetry where each six-lined poem represents the number of sides of Henry Brown’s box. Each of the poems also shows the structure of oppression and the trap that slavery sets for those caught within it. Still, at times her voice soars into hope, still within the limits she has created but unable to be bound.

Wood’s illustrations are incredibly powerful, a great match to the words. She has used a color palette representative of the time period, creating her art in mixed media. The images are deeply textured, moving through a variety of emotions as the book continues. The portraiture is intensely done, each character looking right at the reader as if pleading to be seen.

Two Coretta Scott King winners collaborate to create this powerful book about courage, resilience and freedom. Appropriate for ages 7-10.

I know that we in these modern days might never really understand the fright, pain, and sorrow of being enslaved, but we can try our best to learn, through reading the author's stories that are available, sometimes using a slave's own words to tell the story. This is what Carole Boston Weatherford has done in this poignant account of Henry 'Box' Brown, a slave who through final and unimaginable circumstances finally thought he had nothing to lose. He'd already lost all that counted, his beautiful wife and children.
There is a hint at the beginning right after the title page that readers should look closely as they read. A concrete poem creates the number six, the number of sides in a box. As Weatherford writes Brown's story by letting him tell it, from early life to the end, nearly all the poems are written with six lines. There is one direct quote from Brown at the beginning, from his own autobiography. Part of it reads "I was a slave because my countrymen had made it lawful. . . for the strong to lay hold of the weak and to buy and to sell them as marketable goods". He was born near Richmond, Virginia in 1815.
The pages mostly alternate between a few poems, then a beautiful painting by Michele Wood. Early life as a boy shows the beginnings of the brutality. In "Work", he shares that "Every few months, I trudge twenty miles/With my brother, carrying grain to the mill." At fifteen, in "Split", his family of father, mother, and seven brothers and sisters are sold and Brown lands in a Richmond tobacco factory. He falls in love and is granted permission to marry Nancy, but faces being split from family again, yet manages to stay with her and their children through a few sales. Those sales also mean varying "Overseers", crueler with every change.
Henry's life shows his deep family love, but there comes an end when there are no more ways to keep his family together and he asks: Lord, what more do I have to lose?" His idea put together both shocks at his courage and amazes with his ability to stay alive as he is moved in his box from place to place on his way to Philadelphia. The rest of the story shows him creating a show to tell his story, helping the abolitionists in the states, but having to flee to England when the Fugitive Slave Act is passed.
Wood's paintings feel like folk art painted during the time, filled with characters full of the emotions of love and sadness. rendered beautifully. With the poetry, the story is one to know, for older readers to be inspired by another slave who never stopped dreaming of freedom.
There is a timeline of Henry's life, a bibliography, and notes from the author and illustrator. Michele Wood shares that she used the palette that includes the colors of the 1800s, blue, green, pink, red, and neutrals. And, she wanted to convey both brutality and gratitude, to "unfold the levels of hope and determination". Carole Boston Weatherford comments on "numbers and language", using "old and new terms interchangeably" to "reconcile a nineteenth-century voice with twenty-first-century thought."
It's a wonderful book that expands the history that some of you may have read in Henry's Freedom Box by Ellen Levine and Kadir Nelson for younger readers.