Courage

It's 1841, and fourteen-year0old Manjiro and his four friends find themselves stranded on a deserted island after a storm at sea. Beyond the island is the unknown, filled with monsters and demons and barbarians, or so they've been told. They know they cannot return to their home in Japan--the country's borders are closed to foreigners and also to citizens who have strayed.

Serafina has a secret dream.

She wants to go to school
and become a doctor
with her best friend, Julie Marie.

But in their rural village
outside Port-au-Prince, Haiti,
many obstacles
stand in Serafina's way—
little money,
never-ending chores,
and Manman's worries.

More powerful even
than all of these
are the heavy rains
and the shaking earth
that test Serafina's resolve
in ways she never dreamed.

Doomed to—or blessed with—eternal life after drinking from a magic spring, the Tuck family wanders about trying to live as inconspicuously and comfortably as they can. When ten-year-old Winnie Foster stumbles on their secret, the Tucks take her home and explain why living forever at one age is less a blessing that it might seem. Complications arise when Winnie is followed by a stranger who wants to market the spring water for a fortune.

In lyrical text, Carole Boston Weatherford describes Tubman's spiritual journey as she hears the voice of God guiding her North to freedom on her very first trip to escape the brutal practice of forced servitude. Tubman, courageous, compassionate and deeply religious, would take 19 subsequent trips back South, never being caught, but none as profound as this first. Harriet Tubman's bravery and relentless pursuit of freedom are a testament to the resilience of the human spirit. This is a unique and moving protrait of one of the most inspiring figures of the Underground Railroad.