Henry Cole's meticulously detailed drawings created from hundreds and hundreds of individual pencil strokes evoke the rough texture of hand-hewn logs, hand-spun cloth and hand-tilled soil, while the sepia-tone backdrops recall 19th-century daguerreotypes. How the girl's simple gifts are returned to her, wordlessly transformed by gratitude, is the gentle resolution to this quietly dramatic tale about the Underground Railroad.
The Washington Post - Kristi Elle Jemtegaard
Cole’s (A Nest for Celeste) beautifully detailed pencil drawings on cream-colored paper deftly visualize a family’s ruggedly simple lifestyle on a Civil War–era homestead, while facing stark, ethical choices. Beginning with an illustration of a star-patterned quilt hanging over a fence (such quilts, Cole writes in his author’s note, signified a “safe house” for runaway slaves), the wordless story follows a girl who becomes aware of someone hiding in the barn. In one scene, she glances nervously over her shoulder at an unexpected noise; the next shows a closeup of cornhusks, a frightened eye peering through; the girl dashes from the barn in terror in a third illustration. After pondering her discovery, she stealthily delivers food wrapped in a checkered napkin on multiple occasions. Household adults are none the wiser, and following a close call with a pair of bounty hunters, the girl returns to the barn and discovers a cornhusk doll, left behind as thanks. Cole conjures significant tension and emotional heft (his silent storytelling calls to mind Brian Selznick’s recent work) in this powerful tale of quiet camaraderie and courage. Ages 3–7. (Nov.)
Praise for Unspoken: A Story from the Underground Railroad
A New York Times Best Illustrated Book
"[D]esigned to present youngsters with a moral choice . . . the author, a former teacher, clearly intended Unspoken to be a challenging book, its somber sepia tone drawings establish a mood of foreboding." -The New York Times Book Review
*"Moving and emotionally charged." -Kirkus Reviews , starred review
*"Gorgeously rendered in soft dark pencils, this wordless book is reminiscent of the naturalistic pencil artistry of Maurice Sendak and Brian Selznick." -School Library Journal , starred review
*"Cole conjures significant tension and emotional heft (his silent storytelling calls to mind Brian Selznick's recent work) in this powerful tale of quiet camaraderie and courage." -Publishers Weekly , starred review
"From the title on, silence and secrets create stirring drama in this wordless picture book . . . children will be moved to return to the images many times and fill in their own words." -Booklist
"What Cole shows so superbly through his accomplished yet unpretentious pencil art-the ideal medium for the book, as it looks as if it's of the era as well as portraying the era-is the keeping of secrets. The entire family appears to know what's going on, but the extent of each character's involvement is never made explicit." -Horn Book
Gr 3–8—Gorgeously rendered in soft, dark pencils, this wordless book is reminiscent of the naturalistic pencil artistry of Maurice Sendak and Brian Selznick, but unique in its accurate re-creation of a Civil War-era farm in northwestern Virginia. On the dedication page, readers see a star quilt on a split rail fence, symbolizing the North Star. Confederate soldiers arrive on horseback and a farmer's daughter's lingering gaze betrays her intuition of their visit. She goes about her duties of feeding the animals and gathering harvested vegetables. In the recently harvested cornstalks propped up in the corner of the barn, she hears a rustling and sees an eye. Superb visual storytelling shows her hands time and time again offering a piece of corn bread, apple pie, a leg of chicken, each time on a small checkered kerchief, to the young, hidden runaway. The soldiers return with a poster: "Wanted! Escaped! Reward!" These words call out in the otherwise wordless book, and readers feel their power. Parallels between the fugitive and the farmer's daughter establish themselves visually when the latter gazes from behind a door, terrified at this threat. An author's note details the Civil War stories Cole heard as a young boy and underscores his intention of showing not the division, anger, and violence of the Civil War, but "the courage of everyday people who were brave in quiet ways."—Sara Lissa Paulson, American Sign Language and English Lower School PS 347, New York City
