Stone River Crossing

By Tim Tingle
Hardcover: $20.95

From the award-winning author of How I Became a Ghost, a tale of unlikely friendship and miracles. When Martha Tom helps Lil Mo and his family escape from the plantation across the river, it’s just the beginning of a Choctaw adventure of a lifetime.

Description

Martha Tom knows better than to cross the Bok Chitto River to pick blackberries. The Bok Chitto is the only border between her town in the Choctaw Nation and the slave-owning plantation in Mississippi territory. The slave owners could catch her, too. What was she thinking? But crossing the river brings a surprise friendship with Lil Mo, a boy who is enslaved on the other side. Then Lil Mo discovers that his mother is about to be sold and the rest of his family left behind. But Martha Tom has the answer: cross the Bok Chitto and become free.

Crossing to freedom with his family seems impossible with slave catchers roaming, but then there is a miracle–a magical night where things become unseen and souls walk on water. By morning, Lil Mo discovers he has entered a completely new world of tradition, community, and … a little magic. But as Lil Mo’s family adjusts to their new life, danger waits just around the corner.

In an expansion of his award-winning picture book Crossing Bok Chitto, acclaimed Choctaw storyteller Tim Tingle offers a story that reminds readers that the strongest bridge between cultures is friendship.

About the Creators

Tim Tingle

Tim Tingle is an Oklahoma Choctaw, an award-winning storyteller, and the author of more than twenty books for children, teenagers, and adults. His titles have been recognized by the American Indian Youth Literature Award four times and nominated for numerous state awards. He received his master's degree from the University of Oklahoma with a focus in American Indian Studies. Tingle lives in Texas. Visit his website at timtingle.com.

Awards

  • Best Children's Books of the Year

    Bank Street College of Education

Reviews

  • * "Richly descriptive and leavened with humor, Tingle's complex novel offers valuable insights into rarely told history."

    - Publishers Weekly
  • * "[Stone River Crossing] is a potent mix of history, folkways, and friendship, often wrapped in a gossamer web of magic realism. Tingle, a member of the Choctaw Nation, draws on the group's own stories to spin a tale that begins slowly but builds and twists, until the tension and intensity will have readers at the edge of their chairs."

    - Booklist
  • * "As he did in his picture book Crossing Bok Chitto (illustrated by Jeanne Rorex Bridges, 2006), Tingle (Choctaw) captures a rarely explored bond that formed during colonization between enslaved Africans and Native Americans, an alliance of survival under white colonial tyranny. He evokes a 19th-century Southern landscape, presenting it through the lens of Americans whose perspectives are too rarely shared. This vital story will deepen readers' understanding of the nation's complex history."

    - Kirkus Reviews
  • Tingle's narrative, set in 1808 Mississippi, brings to life a multitude of fascinating characters while illuminating a little-known moment in history, when the Choctaw risked their lives and lands to help free slaves. First told by Tingle in a picture book, Crossing Bok Chitto: A Choctaw Tale of Friendship & Freedom (2006), the story is expanded here. Throughout the tale—told with heart and much humor—runs the refrain "we are all in this together," a fine message for our current divisive times.

    - The Horn Book

Hardcover

  • ISBN 9781620148235
  • Publication Date May 30, 2019
  • Trim Size 7.5 × 5 in
  • Weight 1 lbs
  • Page Count 336
  • Word Count 59763
  • Interests

  • Audience Middle Grade
  • BISAC Category 1 JUV / People & Places / United States / Native American
  • BISAC Category 2 JUV / Historical / United States / 19th Century
  • BISAC Category 3 JUV / Social Themes / Friendship
  • Themes African / African American / Black, Courage, Diversity, Empathy / Compassion, Fiction, Friendship, Geography, History & Civics, Identity / Self Esteem / Confidence, Imagination, Indigenous / First Nations / Native American, Middle Grade, Overcoming Obstacles, Slavery
  • Reading Levels

  • Age Range Ages 8 - 12
  • Grade Range Grades 3 - 7
  • Guided Reading W
  • ATOS Book Level 4.2
  • DRA 60
  • Lexile Level 640
  • Bebop Reading Fluent
  • This Book is Included in These Collections:

    • 15
      Teaching about Slavery Collection
      Collection of 15 books: $218.25

      1352 in stock

    • 107
      High-Low Books for Teens: Middle and High School
      Collection of 107 books: $1,639.70