WARNING: You will need Adobe Flash Player 6 or above to view this website. Click here to download it or here if you know you already have it. Copper Sun Harsh life of slave girl a riveting tale Cleveland native Sharon Draper, award-winning author and graduate of the old John Adams High School, switches literary styles in "Copper Sun." Following her hugely successful string of modern-reality, young-adult fiction, Draper offers a historical novel featuring iron shackles, the Middle Passage and runaway slaves. Draper isn't after a history lesson. Instead, she brings emotional life to the appalling details of forced servitude. From the opening pages, readers become engrossed with the heartbreaking journey of Amari, a 15-year-old African girl captured and enslaved in 1738. The horror begins quickly. Infiltrated by slave dealers, Amari's village is destroyed and survivors are chained together by iron neck bands and marched to the sea. Advised to find something of beauty in any hostile place, Amari gazes at a copper-colored sunset, realizing the same sun shone on her beloved, decimated village. As Amari arrives at Cape Coast, an infamous slave-holding prison, Draper's extensive research becomes evident. The stench of urine, the groans of captives and the pain of skin scrapped away by irons put the reader inside these terrible cells. When the slaves finally emerge and step into brilliant sunlight, they are placed into small boats. The depleted ranks of Africans are rowed to a slave ship and enter a new hell. The barbaric passage across the Atlantic from Africa contains some of the more intense writing found in recent young-adult literature. "Copper Sun" includes the emotionally devastating deaths of characters the readers have come to know and might be too much for readers younger than 12. Draper, a granddaughter of a man born a slave in 1860, writes a description of the Middle Passage that is astounding. Chained, lashed and deathly ill, the men and women are reduced to breathing cargo "stacked like logs for the fire." Bodies are dumped overboard. Sailors prey on healthier girls, abducting them for nightly rape. Below the decks, the stench of feces and vomit forces the white sailors to cover their mouths with rags. Not fully comprehending the language, Amari is unclear why she is being sold at auction in the Carolinas. Readers will be outraged by the degradation she endures as a 16th-birthday present for Clay Derby. The story shifts tone, viewpoint and setting after the auction. Polly, a white indentured servant, is also purchased by Clay's father. Self-reliant and outspoken, 16-year-old Polly hates the slaves but realizes their only difference from her is skin color. Draper skillfully alternates narrators so that Polly and Amari provide two perspectives of the Derby plantation. Amari, summoned to Clay's bedroom twice a week, is excused from working in the plantation's rice paddies. When another sexual treachery blows up violently, the ensuing chaos provides Polly and Amari a cover for escape. Once again, Draper's research is put to good storytelling use. Told to run south, the girls flee toward Florida's Fort Mose (pronounced Mo-Zay), a settlement of freed slaves. This journey becomes one of optimism and hope, a contrast to the ocean voyage of despair. But the book's stunning realism fades as its tone becomes lighter. Several scenes along this final trek defy credibility. That complaint aside, Draper - voted the 1997 national teacher of the year and a frequent classroom presenter to teenagers throughout Ohio - knows her audience. The fast pace and truly horrifying scenes of "Copper Sun" will have adolescent readers quickly turning pages. Their reward is a riveting tale. Friday, December 30, 2005 Rollie Welch Special to The Plain Dealer (Cleveland, Ohio) Welch is a young-adult librarian at the downtown Cleveland Public Library. ***STARRED REVIEW-- JANUARY 1, 2006 ISSUE OF SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL COPPER SUN by Sharon M. Draper (Atheneum; ISBN: 0689821816; January 2006) "This action-packed, multifaceted, character-rich story describes the shocking realities of the slave trade and plantation life while portraying the perseverance, resourcefulness, and triumph of the human spirit. Amari is a 15-year-old Ashanti girl who is happily anticipating her marriage to Besa. Then, slavers arrive in her village, slaughter her family, and shatter her world. Shackled, frightened, and despondent, she is led to the Cape Coast where she is branded and forced onto a 'boat of death' for the infamous Middle Passage to the Carolinas. There, Percival Derby buys her as a gift for his son's 16th birthday. Trust and friendship develop between Amari and Polly, a white indentured servant, and when their mistress gives birth to a black baby, the teens try to cover up Mrs. Derby's transgression. However, Mr. Derby's brutal fury spurs them to escape toward the rumored freedom of Fort Mose, a Spanish colony in Florida. Although the narrative focuses alternately on Amari and Polly, the story is primarily Amari's, and her pain, hope, and determination are acute. Cruel white stereotypes abound except for the plantation's mistress, whose love is colorblind; the doctor who provides the ruse for the girls' escape; and the Irish woman who gives the fugitives a horse and wagon. As readers embrace Amari and Polly, they will better understand the impact of human exploitation and suffering throughout history. In addition, they will gain a deeper knowledge of slavery, indentured servitude, and 18th-century sanctuaries for runaway slaves." **STARRED REVIEW IN THE FEBRUARY 1, 2006 ISSUE OF BOOKLIST COPPER SUN by Sharon M. Draper "Best known for her contemporary African American characters, Draper's latest novel is a searing work of historical fiction that imagines a fifteen-year-old African girl's journey through American slavery. The story begins in Amari's Ashanti village, but the idyllic scene explodes in bloodshed when slavers arrive and murder her family. Amari and her beloved, Besa, are shackled, and so begins the account of impossible horrors from the slave fort, the Middle Passage, and auction on American shores, where a rice plantation owner buys Amari for his 16-year-old son's sexual enjoyment. In brutal specifics, Draper shows the inhumanity: Amari is systematically raped on the slave ship and on the plantation; a slave child is used as alligator bait by white teenagers. And she adds to the complex history in alternating chapters that flip between Amari and Polly, an indentured white servant on Amari's plantation. A few plot elements, such as Amari's chance meeting with Besa are contrived. But Draper builds the explosive tension to the last chapter, and the sheer power of the story, balanced between the overwhelmingly brutal facts of slavery and Amari's ferocious survivor's spirit, will leave readers breathless, even as they consider the story's larger questions about the infinite costs of slavery and how to reconcile history. A moving, personal author's note discusses the real places and events on which the story is based. COPPER SUN has also received a starred review in the January 1, 2006 issue of SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL and a favorable review in the January 1, 2006 issue of KIRKUS. back to lessons section back to Copper Sun resources section