Take a photo of a barcode or cover
heuristicate 's review for:
Roots: The Saga of an American Family
by Alex Haley
Roots was the first book that I read that was written for an adult. I read it very very young and because of that there are parts of it that I still have a visceral reaction to as often happens to things that deeply affect us in childhood.
When I was smallI went through a period of time where I was more than a little obsessed with Harriet Tubman. We had an entire set of children's biographies [bc:The Value of Helping: The Story of Harriet Tubman|196814|The Value of Helping The Story of Harriet Tubman|Ann Donegan Johnson|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1386922900s/196814.jpg|190360] but this was the one that I asked my mother to read to me the most. Since they take about an hour to read aloud she recently confessed to me that she hated the days when it was my turn to pick the bedtime story. When I was 7 we moved to Buffalo (bear with me I swear this turns into a book reveiw of Roots) and my mother took me to several historical sites of the Underground railroad. This lead to me reading every book about Harriet Tubman that I could find in my elementary school's library. I ran out of books but that interest in the pre-Civil War abolitionist movement was pretty solidified. Um, yeah, I was not a real popular kid.
A couple of years later the mini series for Roots came on and my parents let me stay up late to watch it. For weeks afterwards all I wanted to do was talk about it and my mother finally bought me the book. Let me just state for the record that this is not an appropriate book for a third grader whatever their reading level. There is violence, there is sex, there are the complications of life in general and life as a slave in particular. Roots is a novelization of a family's history. But the people were real and remain so on the page. The characters in the book are so human that at times it feels as if you remember being introduced to them. I think that that is the power of this book. You know these people and knowing them, their story can become yours. Think about that. Alex Haley wrote the book to fill in gaps of his own families history. But in a way when you read the book it is almost as if they become your family, too. To this day I want to be able to play in the village with Kunta Kinte with his Grandmother looking on.
I know that was spazzy and might not have given any hard information on the book but honestly it was one of the foremost reading experiences of my life.
When I was smallI went through a period of time where I was more than a little obsessed with Harriet Tubman. We had an entire set of children's biographies [bc:The Value of Helping: The Story of Harriet Tubman|196814|The Value of Helping The Story of Harriet Tubman|Ann Donegan Johnson|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1386922900s/196814.jpg|190360] but this was the one that I asked my mother to read to me the most. Since they take about an hour to read aloud she recently confessed to me that she hated the days when it was my turn to pick the bedtime story. When I was 7 we moved to Buffalo (bear with me I swear this turns into a book reveiw of Roots) and my mother took me to several historical sites of the Underground railroad. This lead to me reading every book about Harriet Tubman that I could find in my elementary school's library. I ran out of books but that interest in the pre-Civil War abolitionist movement was pretty solidified. Um, yeah, I was not a real popular kid.
A couple of years later the mini series for Roots came on and my parents let me stay up late to watch it. For weeks afterwards all I wanted to do was talk about it and my mother finally bought me the book. Let me just state for the record that this is not an appropriate book for a third grader whatever their reading level. There is violence, there is sex, there are the complications of life in general and life as a slave in particular. Roots is a novelization of a family's history. But the people were real and remain so on the page. The characters in the book are so human that at times it feels as if you remember being introduced to them. I think that that is the power of this book. You know these people and knowing them, their story can become yours. Think about that. Alex Haley wrote the book to fill in gaps of his own families history. But in a way when you read the book it is almost as if they become your family, too. To this day I want to be able to play in the village with Kunta Kinte with his Grandmother looking on.
I know that was spazzy and might not have given any hard information on the book but honestly it was one of the foremost reading experiences of my life.