Rinaldi, Ann. Come Juneteenth

Rinaldi, Ann. Come Juneteenth. Harcourt, 2007 [978-0-15-205947-7]

Luli and her family live on a plantation in Texas as the Civil War draws to the end. Like most of the other slave owners in Texas, they decide not to tell their slaves of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. Ruth (or Sis Goose as she is called) is a slave who was raised like a sister to Luli. She becomes very bitter when she finds out that the family hid the fact from her (and the other slaves) that they were free for two years. Will Sis Goose ever feel like part of the family? How will the family react and survive when a small group of Union soldiers occupy the plantation after the war? This 246 page book is a great piece of historical fiction as is usually the case with Rinaldi. What I liked about this one is that it is a little less meaty and therefore more approachable to greater number of students.