If You Please, President Lincoln! - Hardcover

Grade 7 Up?In December 1863 Moses, a 14-year-old slave, runs away from his Maryland master rather than be sold South. He befriends Goshen, a blind free black, and the two are enticed onto a ship with promises of work. The voyage, however, takes them?and 400 others?to an uninhabited island off Haiti, as part of an ill-conceived colonization scheme. Weeks of hunger, sickness, hardship, struggle, and death follow. Moses?educated, energetic, and healthy?becomes the group's leader. By the time the captives are rescued and returned to the United States, Moses has acquired a "family," established an identity, and come to appreciate his race. While Robinet's story is interesting and unusual, it doesn't entirely succeed. Moses's confused feelings about slavery are inconsistently presented and inadequately discussed. His voice in this first-person narrative borders on quaintness. His rapid rise to leadership is unrealistic (and the cover doesn't help by showing a much younger boy). Finally, Robinet is both overly moralistic and incredibly optimistic (nary a harsh act among 400 people on a miserable island?). If You Please, President Lincoln may be worth purchasing for the new insight it provides about white attitudes toward, and projects involving, blacks. Nevertheless, it fails to reach the high quality of books such as Gary Paulsen's Nightjohn (Doubleday, 1993) and Mary Stolz's Cezanne Pinto (Knopf, 1994).?Ann W. Moore, Guilderland Public Library, NY
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Freedom is not a purely political state, as is amply demonstrated in this powerful novel. Moses, an enslaved youth on Maryland's Eastern Shore, is not emancipated by Lincoln's proclamation in 1863-because he lives in Union territory. Learning that he is to be sold, he escapes and fends briefly for himself in Washington, D.C. There he begins to grow out of the dependent patterns of childhood and to reject the self-serving preaching of his former owner, a priest: "My mind knew right from wrong at last." But he is entrapped by an ill-planned scheme to export freed slaves-this development is based on a historical incident-and with 400 other African Americans he is shipped to a small, barren island off the coast of Haiti. As a leader of what proves to be a cohesive, hard-working group, he finally sheds his last psychological shackles. Back in the States, he begins to plan for a college education. And he begins to tell his story himself, in a slightly formal style and vocabulary that evoke the 19th century without slowing the reader. Robinet (Mississippi Chariot) combines desert-island drama with an insightful story of a mind gradually freeing itself. Ages 8-12.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.