Witness Book

Well, I didn't see this coming, wasn't expecting to encounter the Ku Klux Klan in a middle grades book set in Vermont, in 1924. But, here we are. And there they were.

Wow. I wasn't quite ready to explain to my 12-year-old daughter about these grown men in their white robes and hoods, burning crosses on people's lawns, but this book begs the discussion.

I think of Vermont, in the 1920s, as a place of almost no racial or cultural diversity, and there wasn't much, to be fair, but this "prose poetry" novel features a Black family named the Sutters and a Jewish family named the Hirshes.

Things are relatively "okay" for both families in this small town outside of Burlington at the start of the story, but then a local branch of the KKK tries to gain a foothold and things turn ugly for both families, and quickly.

The threat to this community is depicted through the voices of 11 speakers, both the victims and the local townspeople with varying views on what's happening. The author, Karen Hesse, includes a photo gallery of the 11 citizens in the front of the book, and, as often as the speaker changes, my daughter and I found this an invaluable addition to the book.

To be honest, my daughter rubbed her eyes a lot throughout this read, and without the photo gallery, she'd have been completely lost. As it was, she frequently asked, "Who?" despite the name of the speaker provided at the top of every selection. She said that if she had to describe her experience of the book in one word, it would be "confusing."

I'm a little confused myself about the target audience here. As an adult, I understood the story better than my daughter, but it is promoted as a "children's book." My 9-year-old would have been completely lost in the prose poems and the history and never would have sat still for this story nor read it on her own.

Frankly, the book is peppered with racial slurs and violence, covers the story of a famous murder in Chicago of a young teen, and includes a pedophile and a bootlegger.

I'm going to declare it "YA" at best.

Personally, I'd give it 4 stars, but I defer to my girls on their middle grades reads (since they are the intended audience), and my daughter says "three."

My biggest takeaway here was the prose poem told from the perspective of Leonora Sutter, the 12-year-old Black resident of the town. It's sad proof that not enough has changed in 100 years:

when i was taking care of mr. field,
doing the light chores,
keeping him alive with my plain
cooking and housekeeping,
i told him about helen keller and how she was blind all the way
and how i wrote her a letter.
and he showed me a
remington portable typewriter,
almost new
you have any use for that? he asked.
for your letter writing and all?
no sir, i said.
i would have liked a machine like that to write on.
but if i went carrying a big old
typewriter home from
dickenson street
all the way to mather road,
constable johnson,
he'd get ten calls before i got halfway to the covered bridge,
telling him how the colored girl
stole some
expensive machinery.

not worth the trouble.