Juneteenth Jamboree

By Carole Boston Weatherford

Book Overview

A young girl, who has just moved to her parents' hometown, realizes that she has come home after the African American emancipation celebration of Juneteenth.

It's a fine day in June. Cassandra's family has just moved from the city back to her parents' hometown in Texas. Cassie likes her new house, and her new school is okay, but Texas doesn't quite feel like home yet.

What Cassie doesn't know is that her family has a surprise for her - a Texas tradition. As she helps prepare red velvet cake, fried chicken, and piles of other dishes, she wonders what makes June 19th so important. It isn't until Cassie and her family arrive downtown that she discovers what the commotion is about. And, in the process, she realizes that she and her family have indeed come home.

With text and illustrations as warm as a summer day, author Carole Boston Weatherford and artist Yvonne Buchanan bring the African American emancipation celebration of Juneteenth to life for children. Readers of all ages will delight in this declaration of freedom and homecoming.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1600602487
• ISBN13: 9781600602481
• Release Date: October 1995
• Publisher: Lee & Low Books
• Length: 32 Pages
• Weight: 0.46 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 7.8" x 9.8"
• Age Range: 6 to 9 years
• Grade Range: Grades 1 to 4

Customer Reviews

Rutgers University Project on Economics and Children

Cassandra has recently moved to Texas and she wonders when the state will feel more like home. Little does she know that this particular day, June 19, will introduce her to a new holiday she has not celebrated before. Delicious smells in the air, an enormous picnic basket filled with food, a visit from Aunt Bet, and a new dress to wear: what is all the excitement about? Cassandra soon learns that this day, a legal holiday, commemorates the June 19, 1865 announcement by Union Army soldiers in Texas of the abolition of slavery, more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation. The festivities help Cassandra imagine the joy that the freed slaves experienced on that important day, and help her to feel a stronger connection with her new home state. With its lively text and warm illustrations, Juneteenth Jamboree provides a useful opportunity to introduce children to a holiday they may know less about, and to talk about why it took more than two years for the Emancipation Proclamation to be enforced in Texas.

Superb!

This book does a fantastic job of introducing American children to a significant moment in the history of Black Americans in this country. The illustrations are beautiful.