The Slave Dancer
By Paula Fox and Christopher Paul Curtis
3.5/5
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About this ebook
Thirteen-year-old Jessie Bollier earns a few pennies playing his fife on the docks of New Orleans. One night, on his way home, a canvas is thrown over his head and he’s knocked unconscious. When he wakes up, Jessie finds himself aboard a slave ship, bound for Africa. There, the Moonlight picks up ninety-eight black prisoners, and the men, women, and children, chained hand and foot, are methodically crammed into the ship’s hold. Jessie’s job is to provide music for the slaves to dance to on the ship’s deck—not for amusement but for exercise, as a way to to keep their muscles strong and their bodies profitable.
Over the course of the long voyage, Jessie grows more and more sickened by the greed of the sailors and the cruelty with which the slaves are treated. But it’s one final horror, when the Moonlight nears her destination, that will change Jessie forever.
Set during the middle of the nineteenth century, when the illegal slave trade was at its height, The Slave Dancer not only tells a vivid and shocking story of adventure and survival, but depicts the brutality of slavery with unflinching historical accuracy.
Paula Fox
Paula Fox (1923-2017) is the author of the memoirs The Coldest Winter and Borrowed Finery, six novels, and a number of children's and young adult books, including the Newberry Award-winning children's book, The Slave Dancer. She lived in Brooklyn, New York.
Read more from Paula Fox
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Reviews for The Slave Dancer
185 ratings17 reviews
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Jessie Bollier, a thirteen year-old boy living in New Orleans, is pressed into service on a slave ship to play his fife for the slaves to dance to daily to help keep them as healthy as possible.This is not a book I would recommend for children. The only reason I can give for this to be considered as a children's book it that it is told through the eyes of a boy.It depicts complex and dark relationships among the crew members with little explanation of any of their motives. The only slave the reader gets to know at any depth is Ras, and that happens only near the end of the book.This is not an enjoyable reading experience, although realistic.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This is a wonderfully written novel with excellent details about life aboard a slave ship.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Quite uneven, for me. Many sections forced me to reread to capture the meaning, and some touched me. I didn't feel terribly connected to Jessie, but he was a very sympathetic narrator.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This1974 Newbery Medal award winning book is by far the most compelling, graphic and intensely dark Newbery I've read. Having said this, you may wonder why I highly recommend this dark tale full of vivid, violent details.The answer is simply this: Slavery was abhorrently wrong and this book captures the gruesomeness of the slave trade without stopping to the real temptation of pounding home a truth to the point wherein the reader closes the pages. Never exploiting the power of the evil, but honestly capturing the horror, Paula Fox did a marvelous job of addressing man's inhumanity to man. In 152 short pages the author accomplished what many writers cannot do with 500 pages of text.In 1840 Jessie Bollier lives in New Orleans with his hardworking seamstress mother and his lovable sister. Veering off the path when returning from his Aunt's house, he is kidnapped and taken aboard a slave ship. He is a young 13 year old white male who, while aware of the dirty business of slavery, had no idea what was in store for him or the slaves.Playing the fife during the day to earn extra money to help his mother renders him a target of the nasty traders who capture him and stow him on the ship. His job is to play for the slaves when they are allowed a bit of sunshine on deck. Providing sunshine is not done as a kind deed, rather the precious cargo is forced to dance in order to provide stronger muscle tone when they are sold at the final destination of Cuba. As Jessie witnesses the injustice, his notes become disjointed and shrill and he is beaten if he does not earn his keep.Jessie witnesses fights, treachery and hostility between ship mates. As the ship travels to Africa and then to Cuba, the author's excellent writing, provides clear, crisp images that anchor the reader while the ship is tempest tossed and hell bent toward finishing their destination The journey becomes darker and deeper as evil resides above the deck and 98 slaves witness terror below.When Jessie asserts that if the slaves are not treated properly there will not be more trading with the salves all gone, the response of a crew mate is simply stated as "The slaves are never gone!' All of Africa is a bottomless sack of blacks." Thus, with one sentence the author captured the incredible evil misconception that life does not matter...that it does not matter at all!!!!!Another example of excellent writing are these paragraph:For some time after the sun had set, the sky remained the color of rope. The ship lay steady on the glass-lie surface of the water which was pricked, now and then, into small ripples when a seabird struck its surface.A few lanterns were strung up to give us light. They made a mystery of the ship -- we floated like a live ember in a great bowl of darkness.This is anything but a light, easy-breezy YA book. It is nonetheless a part of history that cries to be told with bitter, angry tears of righteous indignation. And, if as the final page is turned, the reader does not come away with the brutality of American slavery, then there is something dramatically wrong with our society.This is an author I'll be sure to read again.FIVE big stars!
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This was a book that stayed in my mind for years. An amazing story that tells the story of the slave trade in a dramatic way, yet is still geared towards children. Highly recommended!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This story is based on the time when slaves were around. This is a very good book but at some points it gets a bit monotonous. This story is about a boy who is on a slave ship and he has to "dance" the slaves.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Shows the horrors of the slave trade, particularly focusing on the brutality and harsh conditions on board the ships that bring the slaves from Africa to America.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Thirteen year old Jessie is kidnapped by slave traders. His "job" aboard the ship is to play his fife to make the slaves "dance" so that they will stay healthy and fetch a better price. This dismal tale outlines his struggles, both physical and mental as he witnesses the atrocities of humankind and the brutality of the open sea. A fairly quick read, edgy in many ways.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Thirteen-year-old Jessie Bollier is kidnapped by sailors and taken to work upon their ship. Jessie learns that the ship is a slaver and is going to Africa to pick up slaves to take back to Cuba. Jessie's purpose on the ship is to be the 'slave dancer', he will play his flute, while the slaves are made to dance so as to keep their muscles fit. This was an okay book. The first half of the book is an intriguing look at life at sea and the characters are interesting. The second half of the book deals with the slave trade and the horrors of such are not sugar-coated and it is a compelling read. However, the writing just didn't grab me all the much. The characters lacked vitality. It was interesting but not one that will leave a lasting impression. Also, I must say I was not impressed with the illustrations at all. They are full of shadows, lack details and very vague. Ultimately, a good, but not great, book.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Jessie is a young boy who lives in New Orleans. Against his mother's rules, he takes the long way home one day, playing on his fife as he went. Jesse found himself wrapped in sail cloth, kidnapped and brought aboard a slave ship. His job on the ship is to be the slave dancer, playing music so that the slaves can dance to keep them exercised during the long voyage. Jessie didn't care for the idea of slavery to begin with, and the horrors of the reality on the slave ship sickened him. He sees the inhuman way the slaves are treated while the men on the ship can only focus on the money they will get for their efforts. The greed and brutality get worse every day, and Jesse must continue to dance the slaves to keep himself alive. In the final scenes, Jessie experiences the worst horrors of his excursion.Telling the story of the horrors of slavery through the eyes of a young white boy could be difficult, but Paula Fox found a sympathetic character in Jesse. He, himself, has been enslaved to these men on the ship, yet he is treated fairly well. As the story unfolds, we experience through Jessie's eyes the truth about a dark period in American history.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Jessie is taken from his mom and sister in New Orleans to play his fife on a slave ship. The slaves, in order to keep healthy, are forced to dance to the music he plays. Thrust into a dangerous situation, Jessie must survive treacherous crew members, a sadistic captain and the horrors of the slave trade. Well written, the book is engaging and its characters realistic. I believe this book would be highly appealing to teenage boys for its flair of adventure and danger.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Jessie Bollier is kidnapped, taken from his mother and sister, and left stranded aboard a slave ship, on its way to Africa to acquire a boatload of slave cargo. He has been taken in order to play the fife on the ship, to play the fife for the slaves, to entice them to dance, to keep the slaves fit while incarcerated on the ship. This was a grueling tale to read. Jessie is in misery. His fellow members of the crew are in misery. The slaves are in misery. There can be no happy stories in this book and there can be no happy endings. But, along the way, Jessie meets a few people who show tiny sparks of humanity and give him hope.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is one of the most disturbing children's books I have ever read. It would even rank up there with disturbing adult books. It is about a thirteen year old white boy who is kidnapped from New Orleans and forced to work on a slave ship. He helps with general ship activity, but his main job is to play his fife for the slaves so they dance, both to entertain the ship's crew and so they get exercise so they are worth more at market. The boy is subjected to physical and emotional abuse at the hands of the crew as he is forced to watch and participate in many horrific events. I felt physically ill while reading much of the book. It is always odd to give a book like this four stars, but it was well-written and evoked powerful emotions about a very real historical topic. The 1974 Newberry winner, but I wouldn't recommend it for children.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Slave Dancer, by Paula Fox, is the story of Jessie,a 13-year-old boy who is kidnapped from his home in New Orleans, by slave traders. Jessie plays a fife and the kidnappers wanted him on their ship to play while slaves were forced to dance on the deck of the ship. This was meant to keep the slaves active and strong on the long voyage across the ocean since they were very cramped and unable to move most of the time. The slave traders were only interested in the money they could make for each slave once they were back in the United States. Jessie is forced to grow up quickly as he encounters corrupt and evil men and must face his collusion in the immoral enterprise. I enjoyed the book as it was well-written, but it is hard to hear about the cruelty and inhumanity that was this part of our nation's history. I tried to imagine what it was like for a young boy to be taken from his home and forced to participate in something so evil. I was glad the author had a "happy" ending which would be easier for a young reader to absorb.As far as classroom extensions, this would be a perfect novel to have as part of a study of the slave trade and the history leading up the the Civil War. Another good use of this book would be as a character study of Jessie, his home life, how he changed during the ordeal of his kidnapping, his relationships aboard ship and his connections with the slaves, particularly Ras, the boy close to his age.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Jessie Bollier is a 13yo boy in 1840 New Orleans, kidnapped into service on a slave transport ship because he knows how to play a fife. As he gets his sea legs, Jessie gets to know the crew, and in the process begins to see his first glimmer of how complex human nature and relations are. Purvis, who kidnapped him, is funny and helpful with advice. Another man, Stout, is superficially kind, but inconsistent. Once the ship reaches Africa and takes on its live cargo of slaves, Jessie's awareness is pushed even further, as he's forced to play his fife to "dance" the slaves as they get periodic exercise on the ship.The slimness of the book belies the heavy themes it holds. Fox's clear, spare writing conveys Jessie's terror, horror and dawning knowledge of the depths of human cruelty. There are certain things--the occasional kindness of others to Jessie, beautiful days at sea, moments of connection with others--that keep the reader from drowning utterly in the frequently gruesome history this book relates. Highly recommended for adults and older children.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A thirteen year old boy named Jesse has walked to his Aunt Agatha’s house to fetch candles at his Mother’s request so that she can have enough light (it’s nighttime) to embroider lavish lords and ladies bowing, prancing horses upon apricot fabric for a rich customer. Walking home, he is kidnapped from his Louisiana home by Purvis and Claudius to become the slave dancer aboard a ship sailing to buy slaves from Africa. What ensues is the explication of the ill treatment and mental precepts of the time juxtaposed against Jesse’s understanding of the situation; how his friendship with Ras and Daniel cement his decision to fight with the North, and why he cannot stand to hear his own son play a comb wrapped in tissue; riveting, horrifying, a story that should never be forgotten.If You Liked This, Try: The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare, Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes, Sounder by William H. Armstrong, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor, Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George.Awards: Newbery, 1974.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Somewhat interesting story told in first-person by a 13yo boy who is "Shanghaied" by the crew of a slave ship. Portions of the tale were a little difficult to follow, possibly due to the author's uneven writing style.
Book preview
The Slave Dancer - Paula Fox
The Errand
In a hinged wooden box upon the top of which was carved a winged fish, my mother kept the tools of her trade. Sometimes I touched a sewing needle with my finger and reflected how such a small object, so nearly weightless, could keep our little family from the poorhouse and provide us with enough food to sustain life—although there were times when we were barely sustained.
Our one room was on the first floor of a brick and timber house which must have seen better times. Even on sunny days I could press my hand against the wall and force the moisture which coated it to run to the floor in streams. The damp sometimes set my sister, Betty, to coughing which filled the room with barking noises like those made by quarreling animals. Then my mother would mention how fortunate we were to live in New Orleans where we did not suffer the cruel extremes of temperature that prevailed in the north. And when it rained for days on end, leaving behind when it ceased a green mold which clung to my boots, the walls and even the candlesticks, my mother thanked God that we were spared the terrible blizzards she remembered from her childhood in Massachusetts. As for the fog, she observed how it softened the clamor from the streets and alleyways and kept the drunken riverboat men away from our section of the Vieux Carré.
I disliked the fog. It made me a prisoner. I imagined, sitting there on a bench in the shadows of the little room, that the smoky yellow stuff which billowed against our two windows was a kind of sweat thrown off by the Mississippi River as it coiled and twisted toward the sea.
Except for the wooden sewing box, a sea chest which had belonged to my mother’s father, and her work table, we owned scarcely anything. One cupboard held the few scraps of our linen, the cooking pots and implements, candle ends and a bottle of burning liquid which my mother rubbed on Betty’s chest when she was feverish. There were two chamber pots on the floor, hidden by day in the shadow of the cupboard but clearly visible by candlelight, the white porcelain one chipped and discolored, the other decorated with a painting of an ugly orange flower which my mother said was a lily.
There was one pretty object in the room, a basket of colored spools of thread which sat on the sill of the window facing Pirate’s Alley. By candlelight, the warmth of the colors made me think the thread would throw off a perfume like a garden of flowers.
But these spools were not used for our clothes. They were for the silks and muslins and laces which my mother made into gowns for the rich ladies of New Orleans to wear to their balls and receptions, their weddings and the baptism of their infants, and sometimes to their funerals.
One early evening toward the end of January, I walked slowly home inventing a story that might distract my mother from asking me why I was late and where I had been. I was relieved to find her so preoccupied there was no need to tell her anything. Even if I had blurted out the truth—that I had spent an hour wandering about the slave market at the corner of St. Louis and Chartres Streets, a place as strictly forbidden to me as Congo Square, where slaves were allowed to hold their festivities, I doubt she would have heard me. The whole room was covered with a great swathe of apricot colored brocade supported by chairs to keep it from touching the floor. Betty crouched in a corner, staring at the cloth as though in a daze, while my mother, her back against the wall, gripped an edge of the brocade in her two hands and shook her head from side to side, muttering to herself in words I could not make out.
I had seen damask and gauze and velvet and silk across my mother’s knees or falling in cascades from her table, but never such a lavish piece as this, of such a radiant hue. Designs were embroidered upon it showing lords and ladies bowing, and prancing horses no larger than thimbles, their rear hooves buried in flowers, haloes of birds and butterflies circling their caparisoned heads.
Without looking up, my mother said, We need more candles,
in such a fretful and desperate voice, I knew she was pressed for time and had before her a piece of work that would keep her up many nights.
I held out a few coins. I had earned them that afternoon playing my fife for the steamboat crews who came to gorge themselves on the fruit that was sold in the great market near the levee.
She glanced at my hand. Not enough,
she said. Go and borrow some from Aunt Agatha. I must start work on this nightmare right away.
It’s beautiful!
cried Betty.
This nightmare …
repeated my mother wearily.
I hesitated. I hated to go to Aunt Agatha’s neat house on St. Ann Street. No matter how often I went, my Aunt would always direct my course like a pilot boat as soon as I opened the door. Don’t walk there!
she would cry. Take your huge feet off that carpet! Watch the chair—it’ll fall! Can’t you walk like a gentleman instead of some lout from the bayou?
To Betty and my mother, I called her a disagreeable and mean old maid. My mother replied that I was a surly boy and would grow up to become an uncharitable man. She was, after all, my mother said, my father’s only living relative, and her grief at his death had entirely changed her nature. We’re his relatives,
I’d muttered. That was different, she’d said. Still, I had no other memory of Aunt Agatha except as a woman who especially disliked me.
I had been four, and Betty a month from being born, when my father drowned in the Mississippi River. He had been working on a snagboat, helping to clear away the tree stumps and other hidden debris that had made the river so perilous for the passage of steamboats. The snagboat had been caught by a current, my father lost his footing, fell and sank before anyone could help him.
In dreams, sometimes even when I was fully awake, a voice inside my head would cry, Oh, swim!
as though by such an appeal I could make the river return my father to us. Once my mother had heard this involuntary cry escape my lips, He was brave,
she had said. But I was not comforted. He is dead,
I had said.
My mother had reminded me then that there were souls whose fates were so terrible in comparison to ours, that we should consider ourselves among the fortunate of the earth. I knew she was thinking of the slaves who were sold daily so close to where we lived.
Jessie! Will you go now, this instant?
I’ve a cramp in my leg,
Betty complained.
Well then, stand up, girl,
said my mother crossly.
I went out onto the street wondering what she would have said if she’d known that this very day I’d seen six Africans offered up for sale as cane hands. They had been dressed as if they had been going to a ball, even to the white gloves they were all wearing. These niggers are matchless!
the auctioneer had cried, at which instant I was picked up bodily by a man as hairy as a dray horse, thrown to the pavement and told to keep away from the slave market until I had something better in mind than nasty peeking.
I knew the way so well, my feet took me to Aunt Agatha’s without help from my brain. She received me in her usual fashion, then gave me three candles.
Why doesn’t your mother use her oil lamps?
she asked accusingly.
They smoke,
I answered.
They wouldn’t if someone knew how to trim them properly.
They don’t give enough light,
I said.
People shouldn’t work at night anyhow,
she said, then, catching sight of the fife which I always carried, she exclaimed, What an undignified way to earn your keep! Playing that silly pipe! It’s time you were apprenticed and learned a trade. I doubt you’d benefit from schooling.
My mother has taught me reading and numbers,
I answered as sharply as I dared.
But who is to teach you how to think?
she snapped back.
I could think of no answer to that so I made for the door, remembering to sidestep a small carpet she prized. Goodnight, Auntie,
I said, as though I were about to burst into laughter. I heard her snort as I closed the door.
The night sky was clear. The air was faintly scented with the aroma of flowers which grew in such profusion inside the walled gardens that belonged to the rich families in our neighborhood. Often I had climbed those walls and peered through the black iron grillework into the great rooms of their houses or looked down into the gardens where, among the beds of flowers, a stone hut had been piled up to shelter the house slaves. Once I had seen a lady glide across a floor in a gown I was sure my mother had made, and on another evening I had been startled when, thinking myself unobserved, I had grown aware of a silent watcher, a black woman who stood leaning against the doorless entrance of such a hut. She had been utterly still; her arms hanging straight by her sides, her eyes fixed upon me as I half straddled the wall.
I had been afraid she would suddenly decide to give the alarm, and I was angry she had seen me at all. Star!
someone had called, and at that, the black woman had placed her hands on her hips and, without a glance in my direction, moved toward the house.
I had never heard anyone called such a name before. When I told my mother about it, omitting the circumstances in which I’d heard it, she said, Might as well call someone ‘shoe’. It’s not a human name.
For a while, I didn’t climb garden walls. But the memory of the woman standing there in the evening shadows stayed with me. I wondered why her master had called her Star, and what she had thought about her name and if she thought about it at all, and I often recalled how she’d walked so slowly and silently to the big house, her skirt hiding the movement of her feet so that she seemed to float across the ground.
I felt restless, and reluctant to return to the room full of brocade, so I took the longest way home, using alleys that kept me off the main streets where sailors and gentlemen and chandlers and cotton merchants and farmers went to make themselves drunk in taverns, and where women gotten up like parrots kept them company.
My mother, repeating the Sunday warnings of the parson about the sinfulness of our quarter, had asked me to promise her I would never enter a tavern or mingle with the nightly throngs on Bourbon and Royal Streets. By keeping to these narrow byways, I avoided breaking the promise but still had the diversion of hearing from over the rooftops the rumble and rise and fall of men’s voices, the bird shrieks of women, laughter and the shouts of quarrels and the abrupt iron-like strokes of horses’ hooves on cobblestones, as the horsemen set off toward unknown destinations.
Someday, I might become a rich chandler in a fine suit, with a thousand candles to hand if I needed them instead of three grudgingly given stubs. I imagined the splendid house I would live in, my gardens, my carriage and horses. I was so intoxicated by my vision that I rose up on my toes as though to meet the fate I had invented. What I encountered was foul smelling canvas, a sky full of it, covering me entirely, forcing me to the ground.
I heard men’s voices. Hands gripped me through the canvas. I was tossed, then trussed, then lifted up and carried like a pig to market.
Take up that pipe, Claudius,
a voice growled near my bound head. He’s worth nothing without his pipe!
I don’t see it,
said another voice in a complaining gurgle.
I was dropped on the ground, and the canvas loosened around my