This book would be good for primary students. This book is "Freedom in Congo Square" written by Carole Baton Weatherford, illustrated by R. Gregory Christie, and published in 2016. This book is about slaves in New Orleans who all work in unjust conditions and count down the days until Sunday. On Sunday, they all get to go to Congo Square and they can set up market, sing, dance, and play music which are all things they are never allowed to do when they are working. It shows how important Congo Square was to these slaves and how much freedom means. I would definitely use this in my classroom to show what times were like in New Orleans and how important freedom is to everyone.

A wonderfully well written story about slavery in the United States. The book focus' on the week long wait that all slaves dealt with before they are granted an afternoon away from their work, when they can congregate in Congo Square, New Orleans. The book is extremely well written and thought out. It succeeds in painting a very real picture of the mundane lives that slaves lived all well providing young readers with text that will engage them and further their literacy skills. The story uses rhyming to keep the flow of the story moving. The rhyming also helps to simplify the narrative making it easier to understand and follow. The narrative also uses the days of the week as an organizational tool. On top of this the book uses numbers to count down to the day in which the slaves. All and all this story provides a valuable perspective and history lesson for young readers as well as many tools that would help in early literacy development ( )

This children’s book was a subtle way to bring the realities of slavery to light. At some point, I believe that children need to know about slavery and this book shows the things that they had to go through on a daily basis. They only had a short time out of the week for themselves, but they celebrated and cherished it. I loved the illustrations. ( )

I had mixed feelings about this book. I loved the folk art style illustrations and learning the history of Congo Square but I did feel conflicted over depictions of “happy slaves” as there is a fine line between acknowledging and romanticizing enslavement. ( )

Freedom in the Congo Square by Carole Boston Weatherford shows in depth look at what some slaves went through on the plantations. I think this would be a great book to show the students so they could make the connection visually to our lesson. It also is a great story because it shows whenever they could have their sabbath day and dance or share their stories from their home countries they would be free. I believe that it could show the kids that no matter what they go through as long as they can find a community to be free with they will never be defeated.