In Janice Harrington’s debut picture book, a young African American girl describes her family’s move from the South to the North in their “banana bright” yellow car. Jessie doesn’t want to leave Big Mama and the rest of her family in Alabama, but she has no choice. She chronicles the journey—including tense minutes when her daddy drives “knuckle-tight” watching for a Negro gas station where they can safely fill their almost-empty gas tank. And she begins to wonder if there may be possibilities she hadn’t considered. “Maybe the North will be better.” By the time they arrive in Lincoln, Nebraska, Jessie has embraced a new outlook: “Daddy, Mama, / Brother, Baby Sister, and me, / all pioneers, all looking out, / hearing a heart-drum / be brave / be brave / Be brave. / We’re together. / Pioneers.” Harrington based her story—which reads like a narrative poem with its graceful use of language, imagery and rhythm—on her own childhood move in 1964. (Ages 6–9)

An African American family becomes a new kind of pioneer

Leaving behind Big Mama, loving relatives, and the familiar red soil and cotton fields of Alabama, Jessie and her family are going north to Nebraska. They are pioneers searching for a better life, one with decent schools and jobs. But traveling through the segregated South is difficult for an African American family in the 1960s. With most public places reserved for "whites only," where will they stop to get gas and food?

Lyrical free verse and evocative paintings capture the rhythm of the road and a young girl's longing as she wonders: Will I like it there? Will I like the North?