`NIGHTJOHN' DEPICTS CRUEL LIFE OF SLAVERY ON JEFFERSON PLANTATION

Nightjohn Author: Gary Paulsen. Publisher: Delacorte. Price: $14. Pages: 92.

`It was a holocaust. It was every bit as bad as what happened to Jews in Europe, and nobody acknowledges it, " said author Gary Paulsen about slavery in recent interview with Children's Express.

His book Nightjohn is a portrayal of slave life based on the experiences of one 12-year-old girl, who was one of Thomas Jefferson's slaves.

Sarny lives the life of most slave girls her age, helping with the field work and the younger children, working around the quarters. She worries about getting older because the time is nearing for her to be sent to the breeding house.

Then John comes along and opens a new world to her.

Old Waller [the slave driver] brought him in bad.

. . . Standing in the sun with the rope going from his neck up to the saddle, tired and sweating because Waller ran him. Dust all over him. Flies around his shoulders.

His back was all over scars from old whippings. The skin across his shoulders and down was raised in ripples, thick as my hand, up and down his back and onto his rear end and down his legs some. . . .

Waller he brought Nightjohn home and ran him naked till he sweated and the biting flies took at him and I was there and saw him come in.

John had been a free slave in the North but decided to go back to the South to teach other slaves how to read and write. Sarny trades chewing tobacco for lessons in reading and writing from John.

One day Master Waller catches Sarny writing letters in the mud with a stick. John confesses to teaching Sarny, and Waller punishes him by cutting off his middle toes in view of the entire slave community.

After that, John plans his escape from the plantation and is successful. He comes back secretly at night to teach Sarny and other slaves how to read, earning him his nickname, Nightjohn.

Nightjohn - with only 92 pages and large type - appears to be geared towards an 8- or 9-year-old's reading level. But it is a tragically told story, and because of the sensitive, gruesome topic is really for preteens to adults.

Here is an example of some of the graphic details in Nightjohn.

"It's wrong to learn to read." Waller's voice loud, booming off the buildings. "It's against the law for you to read. To know any letters. To know any counting is wrong. Punishment, according to the law, is removal of an extremity." . . .

Waller had two field hands to hold one of John's feet on the block. He put the chisel to the middle toe and swung the hammer.

Thunk.

The toe came off clean, jumped away from the chisel and fell in the dirt.

". . . Other foot." Waller spit and wiped the chisel off on the stump.

Nightjohn made me realize how cruel slave owners were to slaves. I pondered why such a thing could happen and was overwhelmed by events in the story.

It frustrated me that such a thing could happen in the United States, especially on the plantation of Thomas Jefferson, the writer of the Declaration of Independence.

Paulsen felt the same way.

"Thomas Jefferson - I'd probably hit him if he was here," he told Children's Express. "He was complete slime. . . . He used to beat slaves if they opened the gates too slowly.

"Vote Republican."